


strong in the broken places

by firetestsgold



Series: the world breaks everyone [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-20 15:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3655797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firetestsgold/pseuds/firetestsgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 2x16. Clarke is still trying to reconcile slaughter and survival when she's caught up in the middle of grounder civil war and taken for prisoner. And among her captors is the last person she wants to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a quote from Hemingway: "the world breaks everyone and after some are strong at the broken places. but those that it will not break, it kills."

 

She walks for twelve days before she feels like she can breathe again.

Twelve days before she stops recognizing the forest around her—fitting really, because she had stopped recognizing everything else in her life as soon as she pulled that lever—and it feels like the first moment she stepped off the dropship and pulled real oxygen into her lungs.

The forest had been the last bastion of familiarity that tied her to everyone else and it held memories of its own. It felt good to leave it behind.

As the days pass, Clarke rises with the sun and walks until she’s exhausted. Sometimes, clouds blot out the moon and stars early and it gets too dark to see where she’s stepping, so she’s forced to lay out a bedroll at the base of a tree and hope she has walked far enough that day to fall into  dreamless sleep.

It never happens.

She rises again each time after struggling through her nightmares, a little more worn than the day before. The ache in her bones feels permanent but comforting, like the gun in her hand. It feels _real._ And she keeps moving forward in search of that feeling and more because a sole focus on survival allows her to strip away everything else.

_You think our ways are harsh. But it’s how we survive._

* * *

Her dwindling supply of rations never really concerned her anyway, but Clarke stops caring entirely on the twenty-second day when she stumbles into a clearing and finds a boar sleeping against a log. She fires two shots before she even realizes she’s raised her gun.

For a moment, it does concern her that she has walked for so long with the gun in her hand and that she so readily pulled the trigger on the only living thing she has seen in three weeks…then the thought is gone as quickly as it came.

Every evening, darkness seems to fall sooner. Twilight gathers around her already, strengthened by the dark clouds swirling overhead, but Clarke focuses instead on cutting the boar open the way Bellamy had once shown her. She works methodically, head down, teeth grit, breaking only to haul the pieces up a hill and into a cave she spotted earlier.

She’s just finishing cutting the last of the boar a half hour later, when the sky opens up and the rain starts to pour. Clarke simply sits back in the mud, letting her hands hang between her knees, and watches the blood drip off of them.

Within five minutes, she’s soaked, and the rain has washed her hands clean. She leaves the carcass and trudges up the hill.

She had stocked the cave with wood in between trips to the boar, but the cave is shallow and a constant freezing wind makes it damn near impossible to get a fire going—it takes an hour and a half before she’s able to pull scalding, charred meat off a stick. It’s not bad, actually, and she sits back against the cave wall as she chews and grins a little when she remembers the panther they had eaten on their first days on Earth. Finn had taken their slices and reheated them over the fire because “burned beyond all recognition” still tasted better than mutated jungle cat. That was the culmination of her culinary education.

It’s a good memory of Finn, one that doesn’t embitter the smile on her lips, for the first time in a long time.

But it’s not just Finn who haunts her anymore. It’s closing the door on the dropship and listening to three hundred grounders burn alive. It’s standing safe in the trees as a missile obliterates a two hundred and fifty people. It’s pulling a lever and watching three hundred innocent men, women, and children die for it.

All for her people. Her hundred.

That’s why she turned her back on Camp Jaha once everyone was delivered safely through the gate. She needed to be able to look at her friends and not see the blood of the people whose lives she traded for theirs.

And they needed someone who knew how to wash her hands of the blood and wasn’t kept up by the nightmares of it clinging to her skin.

Her parents had raised her differently. They had been different: they were the good guys. Her father gave his life for the chance to save his people; her mother dedicated hers to saving everyone else. She wanted to be like them both and now she didn’t know how to be both a doctor and a killer. Hell, the only thing that made her feel human was the constant, daily ache in her bones.

She’d gone to hell to rescue her friends, and she had led them back largely unscathed and now the threats were gone and they no longer needed someone to bleed for them.

They needed someone who hadn’t been defeated, destroyed by her victory.

_They do not know your suffering will be worse. What you did tonight will haunt you until the end of your days._

Lexa haunts her, last, somehow worst of all. Lexa, sending those warriors to kill her people; Lexa, standing next to her in the trees at TonDC; Lexa, walking away with her head held high as Clarke felt her world crumble to ashes.

Clarke sighs heavily, as the last of the boar finishes cooking and she stuffs it in her pack for safekeeping. Despite the warmth of the fire, the food in her stomach, the mesmerizing staccato of the rain outside, on the nights that she stays awake long enough to think of Lexa, she never sleeps.

She stays in the cave for four days.

They find her on the fifth.

* * *

At first, she thinks the snap of the twig is just another breaking bone in her usual nightmare, but when it comes again, Clarke’s eyes fly open and she scrabbles for the gun next to her head. It it’s another boar, she thinks wildly, she would have enough food for—

A man’s voice. Her blood turns to ice. It’s been weeks. Another voice answers the first.

She gets to her feet silently, gun tight in her hand, and edges toward the mouth of the cave. The voices have stopped, though she knows she didn’t imagine them.

Her heart is still hammering, pumping ice through her veins to tense muscles as she stands perfectly still at the cave entrance. She can’t see anything. No one attacks. She takes a single step forward to reveal herself.

A grounder sidesteps out from behind a tree, spear in hand. Another follows him, with another spear. Clarke sucks in a breath.

They appear in ones and twos from all directions, men and women slowly emerging from the brush and from behind boulders, bows drawn, swords and spears ready, until they’re surrounding her. Everything is silently; it's as if they're materializing out of thin air. She glances around at their different styles of their clothing—they’re not the Tree People she’s familiar with, dressed instead in grey furs, or layers of dark brown and reds—and she wishes suddenly she’d gotten to know the clan leaders better.

When Clarke gives no sign of fighting or fleeing, the man standing directly in front of her tucks his sword back into his belt and steps forward. He appraises her with a careful eye.

“Skygirl,” he growls, finally.

She had heard it often enough in the grounder camps, whispered as she passed and usually laced with disdain or distrust but this is the first time she hears it spat with _delight._ A weight slips into her stomach. She’s a prize. She nods anyway.

Steady hands on bows and spears all around her retighten their grip. Clarke’s own fingers twitch on her gun, but, fighting instinct, she raises her chin instead of her arm.

“We still uphold our end of the alliance with the twelve clans,” she says. Her voice is hoarse from disuse. “We’re still on the same side.”

It’s met with low, rumbling laughter from the leader in front of her.

“The people of the desert do not stand with commanders who hide while their people burn and we do not stand with the sky people who burn them. The alliance is dead, skygirl. We’re at war. We march south with the Ice Nation and River Clan against the commander.”

The desert people. Clarke tries to think back through the hazy cloud of her memory before Mount Weather. Their leader…he was one of the few that never stopped glaring at her, despite Lexa’s warnings. They were from the far north, closer to the Ice Nation than the tree people—and the contingent they had sent for the war was small.

And Clarke can’t remember seeing any after the missile hit TonDC.

“We’ll take her to Azgedakwen,” a grounder to her left intones, in rougher, more halting English. He’s one of a few wearing the blue and gray of the Ice Nation.

The group mutters quietly in their harsh tones—Clarke recognizes none of the words Octavia tried to teach her—but anger, mistrust, derision are the same in every tongue.

Finally, their leader nods and gives an order Clarke doesn’t understand. Then he turns to walk away.

Her heart is pounding but numbness trickles cold down from her head, seeping into every muscle. As she raises her gun to shoulder-height and takes aim at, she’s sure she won’t feel the arrows and spears lodge themselves in her chest. They don’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.

Then the world snaps and comes alive: a streak of gray explodes into her line of sight. There’s a grounder between her gun and the leader and she tries but her numb fingers can’t close around the trigger quickly enough before the grounder hits her with a sickening thud. Her breath rips from her chest, her vision goes white for the space of two heartbeats.

Her face is pressed into the dirt. An arrow whizzes over her head. The gun, unfired, is wrenched from her hands. And then it’s over.

There is a buzz of activity above her as she gasps for air and stretches searching fingers out for the gun that she knows she’ll never touch again. The man barks another command and she feels a rope wind around her wrists. Then a cloth is pulled over her face.

Hands are pulling at every part of her body, men and women shouting—as they pull her to her feet, Clarke tries to yank away and receives a blow to the stomach that leaves her hunched over and limp in their arms.

As they tie her hands to the horse’s saddle, Clarke wonders—not for the first time—if maybe she should have turned the gun on herself instead.

* * *

After two days of wearing a hood, of stumbling blindly through the forest with her arms tied to a horse in front of her, two days of hearing nothing but their rough, unfamiliar language, something has awoken in Clarke. Something primal.

They put the hood over the head of a girl who was just trying to straighten her shoulders on the crushing guilt of survival but they take the hood off of the girl who slit her own wrist just to get into the medical ward on Mount Weather and question the guard who had been on the outside.

And that girl is pissed.

As soon as it’s gone, she doesn’t even give her eyes time to adjust to the bright sunlight in the clearing before she lashes out with a kick at the nearest grounder, hitting him somewhere below the knee. He crumples down. She hears another surge in from her right and throws her body in that direction. Her wrists are still bound and tied to the horse but the two of them goes down in a heap and hears the man’s ribs crack under her weight. Someone grabs her—she wrenches away.

Then there’s a _crack_ on the back of her head—she hears it before she feels it—and the earth flips and she’s facedown against it.

* * *

When she wakes up, at least it’s without the hood.

It’s night, now, and Clarke wakes to find herself bound to a tree on the edge of the clearing. She knows without even trying the bonds that it’s useless, but she amuses a nearby guard for a few minutes by struggling against the ropes anyway.

“Let me go,” she tries, even though she knows that’s useless too, “Please.”

He just stares at her.

With a grunt of futility, Clarke presses her head back against the tree and feels dried blood slough off of her scalp. She’s on the edge of the camp, just outside the glow of a central campfire surrounded by the hulking forms of the grounders. It’s the first time she’s seen them en masse: there over a dozen, maybe twenty. Mostly men, maybe four or five women. And surely, there are guards posted out of her sight. She tries the ropes again. The tree at her back is rough, maybe if she can work the fiber against it enough to wear it thin, and memorize when the guards change…

Another man near the fire notices her squirming and climbs to his feet to stomp over to her. He’s huge, with the jagged lower half of a human skull strapped to his face. The look in his eyes as he regards her is so intense—though she hasn’t stopped fighting the ropes—that she thinks she’s going to get hit again, so she braces herself, squeezing her eyes shut.

A second later, she feels the lip of a canteen pressed against her chin.

“Drink.”

She purses her lips.

“You’re useless dead,” he says. She’s not sure how that’s meant to convince her but her throat feels like it’s coated in dust and she’s burning to survive; she accepts a sip of water with a glare. He returns it.

“Food, too,” the man says. He barks an order and someone comes over with strips of the boar meat she cooked days ago.

Clarke Griffin, Destroyer of Worlds, is handfed tiny pieces of meat.

She wears the glare and struggles against the ropes for the rest of the night even though she knows at this point that she’s so unthreatening that no one bothers to look her way. The grounders talk—even _laugh_ —for hours as the fire dies down. They leave two guards posted at opposite ends of the campsite once they fall asleep and Clarke strains to stay awake, to study her enemy, but ultimately it proves as futile as trying to escape her bonds. She slips into blissful unconsciousness far after the last embers have gone out.

* * *

This time, when she wakes, there’s a hand over her mouth and a human skull inches from her face.

She lets out a scream and the hand presses harder over face, shutting her up immediately.

“Quiet, or we’ll both die.” The whispered voice is harsh, frantic, and Clarke realizes that it’s coming from the skull—the mask in front of her. A female grounder is crouched over Clarke, blocking her view of the rest of the camp.

There’s a knife in her hand.

The electric shock of fear in her stomach pulses through her again. She’s not listening—she can’t even hear.

The grounder in front of her hasn’t removed her hand from Clarke’s mouth, but her other hand is occupied as well: cutting through the ropes that hold her to the tree. The grounder’s eyes are the only thing visible behind the full-face skull mask. Clarke can’t stop staring, shocked into place. Her gaze flicks upward and she sees dark hair mostly tucked beneath a black bandana but beneath it, Clarke spots braids that send a pang of familiarity stinging into her chest. Octavia wears her hair like that.

She thinks of Octavia, of Bellamy, Jasper, Monty, Raven, her mother. She needs to see them again. She doesn’t want to die.

The moment she feels the ropes loosen, Clarke lunges upward and throws her weight against the woman, knocking her off balance, then Clarke scrambles back until her fingers close around a fist-sized rock she spotted earlier in the evening. She swings it upward, forcing the grounder back as she tries to climb to her feet. Her legs shake beneath her. Six hours tied to a tree will do that to you.

For a moment, time stops as the two women eye each other warily, one with a knife and one with a rock, bodies tense, illuminated only by moonlight.

“You have to run,” the other woman says, voice barely above a whisper. “Keep the moon on your right side. At dawn, keep the sun on your left side. Do not stop. I’m their tracker, I’ll lead them in a different direction. But—”

Clarke hefts the rock, waiting for an attack. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demands, louder than she anticipated in her attempt to be intimidating.

“Shof op! Tonight is the first night I have been on guard, you—”

But the damage is done—Clarke’s entire body stiffens as she hears hoarse shouts and the rustle of blankets and the clattering of weapons. She looks past the grounder woman into the camp and sees shapes start to rise from the brush.

The woman looks over her shoulder too, snarling a curse, and when she looks back at Clarke she’s the first to react. In one smooth moment, she lunges forward, knocks the rock from Clarke’s hands and loops an arm around Clarke’s waist with an iron grip. Her momentum carries them both back several feet before she drives them both to the ground. The breath explodes out of Clarke’s chest on the impact.

The shouts are louder now. _“Skaigirl!”_ echoes through the trees and now there’s true fear in her limbs.

The grounder has her pinned with her slight but strong body but Clarke fights with everything she has, trying to hold the knife away and reach for the woman’s throat. Instead, her fingers hook into the teeth of the skull mask. She rips it off and flings it into the darkness.

It’s Lexa.

Her nose is crooked, her face is dirty and bruised, her hair is streaked red with something that looks like blood, and her once intricate braids are now subtle and hidden but _Lexa_ is the one sitting on top of her, a storm of fear and anger and desperation in her green eyes. They’re more wild than she’s ever seen them but Clarke would know those eyes anywhere; she sees them every night in her nightmares.

It’s too much, a nuclear explosion of emotion, and Clarke goes limp. She can’t fight anymore.

This isn’t real. The pain in her body, the shouts echoing above her, those are definitely real, but Lexa isn’t here. She can’t be here.

Surprised at Clarke’s sudden lack of resistance, she flings her knife away and releases Clarke’s arms.

“ _Hit me back,”_ Lexa hisses through clenched teeth. “ _Clarke!”_

Clarke still isn’t sure if she’s hallucinating the woman above her but the sound of her own name from that voice has her hands forming into fists. She strikes upward, blindly.

_Crack._ Bone on bone, clean and pure. Lexa’s head snaps back and the shout of pain that escapes her lips has a strange satisfaction burning deep in Clarke’s chest even as the onrushing grounders block out the sky above her.

She’s hauled to her feet and nearly thrown back down again but the grounder leader balls his fist into the back of her jacket and holds her up. He shouts something—someone else translates for Clarke, but she’s not listening. She’s shaking.

She watches Lexa scramble unsteadily to her feet and limp to the other side of camp, ducking behind another grounder before daring to turn back and look.

They stare at each other from across the fire, Lexa’s expression unreadable. There’s blood streaming down over her chin. She was covered in blood last time Clarke saw her, too, though back then it had been the blood of their shared enemy.

Then Lexa pulls the skull mask back onto her face and retreats further into the circle of guards.

_When you plunged that knife into the heart of the boy you loved, did you not wish that it was mine?_

She didn’t then, back when she needed Lexa.

She’s not as sure now.


	2. Chapter 2

Clarke is starting to wonder if being a prisoner of war ever gets more interesting than walking, because, for the past three days, that’s all they’ve done.

On the bright side, she’s not dead yet. And they haven’t put the hood back over her head. But rather than placate her, Clarke grows more frustrated every mile they cover. All she can see is the futility of her situation. The ropes on her wrist. The dozen armed warriors surrounding her. The unforgiving forest beyond them. And, of course, glimpses of Lexa on the outskirts of the group every now and then.

Her knuckles are bruised where she hit Lexa three nights before. Every so often, Clarke glances down at the mottled purple and green and feels that same flash of satisfaction she did when her fist first made contact. It’s strange to feel this way, but maybe this is who she is now. And it feels a hell of a lot better than before.

* * *

Russ falls into step with Lexa at the back of the column, casting a cautious gaze over the warriors ahead of them before releasing the hold on his sword. He’s known her almost as long as Gustus had, and feels ill at ease any time he’s not by her side. Lexa, truthfully, is thankful for the company. If not her best advisor, he is at least her best warrior.

“How is your nose…Tira?” It’s hard to force the name out of lips that want to say _Heda._

“Hurts.”

The lines of Russ’s frown deepen. He spars regularly with Lexa, hand to hand and with weapons. And he had seen her in battle. In both cases, it had been years since he had seen her own blood on her face.

“What happened?” he asks in a low voice.

They walk for several paces, slowing to separate from the group ahead. Lexa hasn’t torn her eyes away from the shock of blonde hair far ahead of her at the front of the column.

When there is enough space between them and the convoy of warriors, Lexa says, “It seems Clarke has better reflexes than I believed.” The corners of her lips twitch upward.

“You say that as if you are proud of the Skaiheda.”

It takes her another moment to respond.

“I am.”

* * *

The sun is still high in the sky when they stop to make camp, and Clarke realizes it’s because the large group has already finished off her pack of rations and boar meat. She’s tied to the usual tree, protesting weakly, as a dozen of the warriors gear up and plan their hunting expedition. When they head out, there’s a glimmer of hope: they leave behind just five guards positioned around the perimeter of camp, and, surprisingly, Lexa. The commander limps back and forth across camp, setting up a cooking fire.

The forest is exceedingly quiet. Clarke can hear Lexa breathing.

Soon enough, the fire’s built—shoddily, which is probably as intentional as the fake limp—and Clarke steels herself as Lexa walks over. She’s carrying the last of the strips of meat and offers them out to Clarke.

“Untie me,” Clarke says quietly, shaking her head at the food and refusing any peace offering Lexa is trying with it. “It’s the perfect time. I can get away.”

Lexa stares down at her. “They left five guards, because I managed to convince them the other night was an escape attempt. They will be watching for you.”

Clarke refuses a second offer of food so, for some reason, Lexa takes that as an invitation to sit down next to her. She glares; Lexa takes no notice. She sits so regally, tall and straightbacked under dirty blue and gray ice nation furs, that Clarke wonders how anyone could possibly believe her weak, injured warrior façade. Especially now, with her skull mask removed. The look on her resting face is nothing if not noble.

“How’s your nose?” Clarke asks.

“Fine.”

She doesn’t apologize. Silence grows between them.

“So are you going to explain to me what the hell is going on?” Clarke murmurs, finally. Lexa sends her a glance that warns her to keep her voice down.

“Civil war,” Lexa replies, a surprising tone of bitterness in her voice. She toys with a piece of meat.

“Before we even went to battle the mountain, Clarke, word began to spread about the attack on TonDC. Octavia is not our only intelligent warrior. I had hoped winning the war without bloodshed would quiet the talk. Instead, my people perceived my actions on the mountain as…it worsened the situation surrounding TonDC, to say the least.”

Lexa looks up, scanning the brush for signs of the guards, and drops her voice lower. “We knew the Ice and Desert people, farthest away, would be the first to break the alliance, so in the dead of night two days after the attack on the mountain, I left with eight of my advisors and guards. It was too late.

“We were nearly to their city when we were discovered by an Ice Nation scout group. They took us by surprise but we fought back. Russ and I were the only ones left standing.”

Clarke sees the muscles in Lexa’s jaw twitch as she steadies herself. It’s starting to make sense.

“We had no other choice,” Lexa continues. “It was clear we were at war. We were too deep in enemy territory to escape safely. So we put on their clothes, took their weapons, killed our horses and began the retreat on foot, hoping to stay out of sight. We ran into this group not long after. I was able to convince them I was of the Ice Nation and we decided to stay with them, to gather intelligence and travel safely until we are close enough to break away. They have never been this far south before, and they’re young—they’re just fodder for the war—and they didn’t recognize me.”

“I barely recognized you.”

Lexa nods. She pauses for a beat before saying, “I didn’t know you were alive until you stepped out of that cave.”

Clarke doesn’t respond. She has her information. There’s no conversation left.

“Where is your guard, Clarke?”

“Didn’t have one.”

“Why were you so far north?”

Clarke shakes her head.

“Clarke…what happened on the mountain?” Lexa asks softly.

Pressing her head back against the tree, relishing in the pain of the ropes around her ribcage, Clarke snaps. “Does it matter? You got your people back.”

Lexa stares at her, jaw tightening again. “As did you.”

“And yet here we are.”

There’s a bite to her voice, the best she can manage without faltering, that thankfully Lexa understands; she clearly wants to say more, but the only thing worse than further discussion of the mountain would by Lexa’s sympathy. Silence is the best thing Clarke can imagine right now.

Not long after, the hunters begin to return in their groups, sending Lexa limping away with her skull mask back in place. They have rabbits, mostly, though one group returns with a deer. At least if Clarke has to be tied in place for eighteen hours, she’ll eat well.

* * *

Lexa, of course, is the one given the responsibility of readying Clarke for the next day’s march. She doesn’t bother to help her as Clarke struggles to her feet, joints groaning, muscles so stiff they feel dangerously close to snapping at the movement—but, with her body shielding the action from the rest of the grounders, Lexa is gentle as she binds Clarke’s wrists. Tentative, even. She keeps looking up to check Clarke’s reactions whenever she touches the bruises on Clarke’s knuckles.

“I killed them,” Clarke says quietly. Lexa looks up again. “I killed everyone in Mount Weather. They burned to death.”

Lexa’s fingers stop what they’re doing, frozen on Clarke’s wrists. She knew, she had to have known it was the only option, but still, she takes a second to respond. “It is a weight you shall always carry. I—”

“I did it because you left me and it was my only choice. You only gave me one choice, Lexa.” Her voice is steel. “Just like all the rest of them ever since I landed. You only gave me one choice.”

“Clarke…”

“I don’t want to be like this,” Clarke says—the steel wavers dangerously. “I can’t. I don’t know how.”

For a moment it looks as if Clarke will pitch forward into Lexa’s arms, her body shaking under the weight of the grief and the loathing of the memory. Lexa finishes the knots in the rope quickly and steps away. She studies Clarke, waiting. Then she squares her shoulders and stands taller, every inch the Commander who walked away.

“I did what I had to do, Clarke. Sacrifice is a part of life.”

“You sacrificed me,” Clarke spits, gritting her teeth in sudden anger. “And everyone I love.”

“I would again.”

“Stay away from me.”

“I will not ask your forgiveness.”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

Lexa nods and Clarke lets out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding and she wishes Lexa would have left the ropes just a little looser, because she’d hit her again just to make herself feel better. The ache in her chest that she’s been nurturing for weeks is now burned away by her anger, fresh and raw and real, rather than dull and pounding and always in the back of her head. It’s like cutting off a gangrenous limb, burning away infection.

And it feels damn good.

Clarke’s silent fury carries her for miles as they forge their way through particularly difficult mountain terrain. The path is barely a game trail and every few steps, the shale gives way under their feet and sends someone stumbling. The pace slows to a crawl. However, it does give Clarke some degree of pleasure to see Lexa nearby, struggling to maintain a limp as they clamber over boulders.

Her satisfaction is cut short when one of the warriors falls into step beside her and nudges her arm softly. He’s one of the youngest in the group; she’s seen him sitting on the outskirts of the camp most nights, with the worst cut of meat in his hands. He doesn’t even have hair on his face, yet.

_Fodder for war,_ Clarke remembers. She tastes bile.

“You...killed the maunon,” he says. “The mountain men.”

Had he overheard? Clarke’s breath freezes in her lungs; she might have just sentenced Lexa, Russ, and herself to death if this boy figured out who Lexa was. She doesn’t dare glance to her right to see if Lexa is paying any attention. She forces herself instead to look over at the young kid.

 “I did.”

“How?” She relaxes. He’s all wide-eyed wonder, simultaneously in awe and wary of Clarke. “You destroyed two thousand mountain men in a single night.”

“Five thousand,” another warrior mutters ahead of them. “Shof op, Aren.”

Clarke watches Aren look back to her, nervously running his fingers along the bow in his hands, as if she’ll leap at him and send him to wherever she sent the mountain men.

“Five thousand,” she confirms. Somehow, a lie makes it easier to choke out. Like maybe the entire story is a lie. She raises her voice so those around her can hear. “After your commander betrayed us, I broke open the mountain. Their bodies are still there, as a warning to those who threaten my people. I burn all those who seek to harm us.”

Aren grips his bow tighter. Lexa glances sideways at Clarke. The warrior ahead of her yanks hard on the rope he’s leading Clarke with.

And Clarke just wants to fall to her knees. Bringer of death, destroyer of worlds. Those she’s killed haunt her nightmares and she knows she deserves it and now she’s wearing their death like a medal.

* * *

It’s been dark for several hours, the stars brilliant above her, but Clarke can’t will herself to sleep even when she’s staring into the mesmerizing depths of the dying fire. Her requests to be tied up horizontally for once have gone ignored.

It also doesn’t help that Lexa has stuck to her habit of laying out her bedroll irritatingly close to Clarke. (Though it’s worse when she’s on guard duty at night and stands within spitting distance.)

Clarke releases a sigh of despair and tilts her head back to start picking out constellations. She used to fall asleep on her father’s lap when she was a child this way, when they would sit at window of their room on the Ark and watch the galaxies roll by.

Lexa’s murmured voice brings her back from that sweet memory.

“You should not have discussed the mountain today,” she tells Clarke. “Now they will watch you more closely. They perceive you as a threat.”

“Maybe you all should.”

“I am not with them, Clarke.”

“You’re not with me either, so.”

Lexa is only a silhouette against the fire so Clarke can’t read her face, but thankfully, she doesn’t respond.

Agonizing hour by agonizing hour slip by, with Clarke unsure of how much of it is reality and how much is just a waking nightmare she has for the few moments she does manage to doze off.

She still spends most of her waking hours looking for an escape route. When they hike ridges, she wonders if she could throw herself over the edge and slide to safety, or if the fall would kill her, or, worse, if they could catch her. While the grounders set up their camp every night, she makes a note of the bedroll locations and who has what weapons just in case she’s able to untie the ropes around her.

She’s run through strategies so many times that when she’s jolted from her poor excuse for sleep by heavy footsteps coming through brush, she’s instantly awake and fighting the ropes. The guards don’t change this early at night.

“ _Heda.”_ The whisper is barely audible, slicing through Clarke’s escape plan. Lexa stirs at the noise. Fear freezes Clarke’s muscles when Lexa sits up and a shadow slides out of the trees.

“Sha, Russ?” Lexa whispers. Clarke sees her release the grip on the knife hidden in the furs. Lexa can’t sleep without it.

Russ had taken the guard position just a few hours ago but now he pads across the clearing and drops to a knee in front of his commander, speaking Trigedasleng in a low voice. He gestures toward the forest; Lexa shakes her head. Even if Clarke could understand what they were saying, their voices are too low to make out words, but the hard edge in Lexa’s response is more than audible. Russ pleads. Lexa answers with the same firmness and entertains his rebuttal for a brief second before ending whatever argument they were having with a few short words. He regards her silently for a moment, then slowly stands and slips back into the forest to resume his guard position.

When he’s gone, Lexa releases a soft sigh and glances toward Clarke, who shuts her eyes quickly in case Lexa feels the need to start dispensing more wisdom. Eventually, the commander slips back down into her bedroll.

Clarke doesn’t sleep that night.

* * *

She can’t do this much longer. She hasn't slept. Dinner each night is a few mouthfuls of food and water. The ache in her bones stopped being a relief a long time ago, back when she realized the futility of her situation, now every step is a concentrated effort fueled by what little determination she has left.

These days the only thing she can cling on to is the anger she harbors for Lexa. Survival despite Lexa has become her lone goal.

Lexa herself is absent from the column this morning—she surged ahead with a group of hunters with plans to meet at camp later, leaving about a dozen warriors and Clarke to make slow progress along a steep, muddy ravine. They have to pick their steps carefully, moving at a crawl, and it would have been a much better walk had they waited for the hunters to return with food this morning, rather than setting out on empty stomachs.

Clarke senses they’re getting closer to their destination, though, which is why the grounder leader is driving them so hard without the guarantee of food. Each new escape plan she comes up with is weaker than the last.

Russ, Lexa’s guard, is the one leading her today, which she is grateful for. Usually, when she slows her pace at all, she receives a sharp tug on the rope and ends up in the dirt. Russ stays by her side, at her pace.

They don’t talk much, either, until at last the warriors are spread out enough over the path, everyone traversing the ravine at their own pace and no one can hear them.

“The Heda is in danger,” Russ mutters under his breath to her.

_Danger? Really?_ But silence would serve her better than sarcasm in this instance, so Clarke bites their tongue.

Russ glances around at the warriors struggling along; no one pays attention to the prisoner and her handler, but he moves closer and lowers his voice anyway. “The longer she stays with the desert people and the ice nation the greater the danger. We should have left two days ago, when we turned west toward their army. We’re getting too far into their territory. If she’s discovered…”

“Why don’t you leave?” she challenges. “Next time you’re on guard, you can both run.”

“Because of you. She says that we do not have enough information on their attack movements, but she refuses to leave while you are their captive. And she cannot find a solution.”

There’s a strange pang of gratitude in her chest at that— _at least I’m not dying alone—_ until Clarke glances down to see the still-healing bruises on her knuckles. Running her fingers over them has become second nature, giving her a little spark, a desire to swing again. Lexa found a solution last time she had an impossible task in front of her, she thinks, clenching her injured fist.

All at once, Clarke is grateful, bitter, guilty, relieved, nostalgic, a dizzying combination that keeps her from responding.

“I have great respect for you, Skaiheda,” Russ presses. “You have proved yourself in battle. You helped save my people from the mountain. And I respect Heda’s feelings for you. But none of us have any hope unless she lives and makes it back to her people. You must tell her this. She will listen to you.”

_I made this choice with my head and not my heart._

Clarke scans the forest ahead of her as if Lexa will come looming out of the trees. “She doesn’t listen to me.”

 “She will because you speak reason. And when she does, she will raise an army to rescue you. I have seen her do it before—”

“With Costia.”

It’s not a question, but he falls silent and it’s all the confirmation she needs. The metallic taste of blood spreads through her mouth as they march on.


	3. Chapter 3

They don’t get much farther along the ravine before the air is suddenly ripped apart by hoarse shouting and the crashing of branches that Clarke registers a half second before Russ hefts his spear with one arm and pulls her to his side with his other.

The other warriors draw their weapons as well; a dozen spears, swords, and bows point at the same spot in the forest for ten tense seconds as the crashes and shouts get louder. Suddenly two warriors from the morning’s hunting party come spilling into sight.

“Tira, Aren!” they cry. They’re red-faced, eyes wide with fear and breathing so hard their words are next to unintelligible. They yell to the grounder leader, desperate.

 _Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong._ Then Clarke notices the blood on their clothes.

At once, the grounders all set off at a sprint into the trees, with hoarse battle cries echoing into the air. Russ starts to follow, still holding Clarke’s rope.

“Wait, wait, wait!” she yells, before he can get up to speed and mindlessly yank her to the ground. “Russ, what’s happening? What’s going on?”

He turns back and his eyes are wild, everywhere at once. “The—” He zeroes in on the jagged knife in Clarke’s hands. “Where did you get that?”

“You keep it in your coat, on the left side,” she says, quickly and dismissively as his hand flies to the empty sheath at his side. “I grabbed it when you pulled me close. But what is happening?”

“The heda is injured.” He snatches the knife from her hands, which had just gone numb, and glances shrewdly over his shoulder, inspired. “It’s the perfect opportunity for you to go. Run south, as fast as you can.”

The shouts are fading into the trees as the warriors rush toward their injured comrade—she could be miles away before they even realize she’s gone. The moment his knife touches the ropes on her wrists, however, Clarke wrenches away from him. “Wait! If she’s hurt, you said she needs to live. I can help her.”

Russ gapes. “She’s only stayed this long for you, you need—”

“Yes, and if she dies, there’s no hope! You told me that. If I stay and she lives, we might be able to get away later.”

“This might be our only chance—”

Clarke Griffin had faced greater obstacles than the single grounder in front of her, and a fresh tenacity flooded through her at the thought, fueling her legs. With a gritted-teeth, “Let’s go, there’s no time,” Clarke turns and runs in the direction of the other warriors until her rope tightens. A heartbeat later, it slackens again as Russ follows her.

They track the shouting a half mile before they catch up with the rest of the group and the shouting has given way to screaming. They emerge out of the trees to quite the scene—on the banks of a wide green river lay Aren, the young kid who had questioned Clarke the day before. He’s writing in pain, thrashing in a pool of blood that stands starkly red against the white pebbled riverbank and spreads slowly toward the water’s edge. A group of warriors surrounds him, at a loss for what to do as they motionlessly watch him suffer. Nearby, another of the hunting party sits in soaking wet clothes, staring into the water.

“Laudneswima,” Russ whispers faintly, following the warrior’s gaze. He struggles with the English translation when she looks at him in confusion. “Fish…with teeth. Pain. They should not have been in the water.”

When Clarke’s eyes at last find Lexa, she pulls free of Russ’s grasp and runs to the Commander. She stands far from the rest of the group, leaning against a tree, her hands on her knees, wet hair hanging down in lank curtains to hide her face. _At least she’s standing…_ Clarke skids to a stop in front of her and that’s when she notices the red patch shining on Lexa’s side. Her heart jumps into her throat.

“I am fine,” Lexa grunts, lifting her head just high enough to see Clarke’s shoes. “Pay no attention to me, Clarke.”

“Like hell.”

Despite Lexa’s weak protest, Clarke kneels and peels up the shredded material of Lexa’s shirt. The fabric is sticky with blood but once the skin is exposed, Clarke experiences the curious sensation of feeling her heart sputter back to life and resume its natural rhythm: the wound, while covering much of Lexa’s side and even biting into a tattoo on her back, does not seem to be more than a quarter inch deep anywhere. Painful, gruesome, but not life-threatening.

“It grazed me,” Lexa explains, “When we tried to pull him from the water.”

Clarke nods, lowering the shirt again. “You’ll need—” Aren’s screaming again, muddling her thoughts, “—You’ll need to get it bandaged. But you’ll live.”

“Fine.”

She shoots a glance over her shoulder at Aren, who still hasn’t been touched by any of the other warriors, then she looks up to Russ. “Tell them I can help him.”

Suddenly, Lexa bolts upright, wincing with pain. She grunts her dissent. “Do not say a word, Clarke, he—”

“Lexa! We can’t let him die.”

“Even if he lives, his death is guaranteed,” Lexa hisses, leaning in. “He is already marching to war. Let him die here, and it’s one less guard to escape from. Do not give them more reason to think you are a valuable prisoner.”

“Civil war or not, he’s one of your people. He’s a kid.”

Lexa’s eyes are stone against her pale face. “I make the necessary sacrifices.”

“I don’t,” Clarke snarls. Raising her voice, she backs away from Lexa, who tries in vain to pull her back. “Hey! Hey! I’m a healer!” She calls to the men and women surrounding the boy on the ground. “I can help him.”

The leader turns to look at Clarke. There’s a shocking resemblance between his stoicism and Lexa’s that makes Clarke grit her teeth harder for it. “I can save him,” she repeats, “If you untie me and let me look.”

“You’re a healer?” He studies her as if there isn’t a boy screaming and dying at his feet. The screams are becoming too much for her.

She responds with a look that dares him to doubt her, holding out her bound hands. “My mother taught me. She’s the best of my people….please, let me help him.”

After a moment, he nods to one of her soldiers. As soon as her wrists are free, Clarke drops to her knees and her hands go to the boy’s face.

“Hey, hey, hey,” she murmurs, holding his cheeks to gain his attention, “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine.”

“Ai gonplei, ai gonplei…”

“It’s not over,” she tells him.

His eyes are rolling back and she’s not sure if he even heard her, but his thrashing slows under her touch so that she can look down over his injuries. There’s blood everywhere; without thinking, she barks an order at two of the closest warriors and is surprised when they obey, kneeling and holding the boy down as Clarke pulls off his outer clothes.

His chest and his right shoulder are little more than ground meat at this point and there’s so much blood that her heart starts to sink. _I can’t save him._ Her hands start to shake. She presses down on the largest wound, then pulls away. He’s still raging in pain. She presses down again, biting her lip so hard she’s sure she’ll her own blood soon.

“Clarke.”

She looks up to find Lexa standing there—well, Russ is supporting most of her weight—but she stands above Clarke among the cadre of warriors, and in her outstretched hand is a bundle of dark cloth.

Clarke’s gaze slides up to meet Lexa’s. The commander gives a single slow nod. _Save him._

“Cut it into strips,” she tells Lexa, “And find more if you can.”

Another warrior offers his knife and he and Lexa start handing Clarke strips of cloth one by one; with each new strip she applies, her nerves steady a little more. It takes forever to cover the wounds and even when she does, the bandages are soaked through so quickly it feels useless. But they keep cutting them, keep handing them to her, and she keeps piling them on and pressing down.

Her hands haven’t stopped shaking, but she can see a pulse beating in the side of his neck. Clarke clings to that pulse as much as Aren himself does as time ticks by.

She can’t let him die.

At long last, he stops thrashing, his fevered groanings about his own death start to fade, and the blood stops seeping through each new layer of bandages beneath her fingers—and the vein in his neck keeps twitching every few seconds.

“The bleeding’s almost stopped,” Clarke says breathlessly, looking up. “I need something to tie the last of the bandages down, some rope, or…”

“He will live?” It’s the grounder leader.

“He’s lost a lot of blood. If we can get him somewhere that will have the supplies, we can put more blood into him, then stitch him up, and he should be okay.”

“We do not have time to leave the march for one soldier. Will he live without the other blood?”

“You’re going to have to make time or else he won’t last. He can’t march.”

“Then he dies.”

It hits her like a punch in the stomach. Someone tosses a length of rope to Clarke but she lets it fall untouched as she jumps to her feet and glares defiantly into the face of the leader. Her hands, arms, chest are slick with blood but her hellish appearance has nothing on the fire in her eyes.

“You’re not letting him die. If you’re going to march on the commander, you need every able body you can get.” He doesn’t flinch; she gets closer. “I’m giving you a chance to save your warrior. What kind of leader ignores that chance? How will the rest of your warriors fight for a leader who doesn’t care if they live or die?”

 _His knife hangs at his belt on the right side, his sword on the left, if he goes for the sword I can get the knife first, if he goes for the knife, I can get back…_ He goes for neither. Instead, he looks to his side and receives a nod from his second-in-command.

“There’s a village near here. Two hours march.”

Clarke nods and looks at the second-in-command. “Build him a stretcher to carry him on.”

* * *

The stretcher is almost ready when Lexa finds her kneeling at the water’s edge, cleaning the blood from her hands and arms. She can’t really do anything about the already-drying bloodstains on her clothes.

“You did well, Clarke.”

“He still might die.”

“For now, he is alive. We do the best we can with what we have.”

The blood is nearly gone, needing just a few more seconds of scrubbing, and then she thinks of Lexa’s wounds. “Your side,” she says, standing, “Let me look at it again. I’ll at least bandage it to protect it.”

“I’m fine,” Lexa repeats.

An argument jumps to her tongue but the grounder leader gets there first. “ _Tira,”_ he warns, calling Lexa’s fake name. He gives her a glare and nods to Clarke.

For the first time in a long time, Clarke has to bite back a smile at the way Lexa clenches her jaw and burns with rage at taking orders from the enemy like a common foot soldier. Nonetheless, she lifts her shirt for Clarke.

She uses the last of the makeshift bandages, wrapping them around Lexa’s torso gently, slowly. But even her softest touches elicit winces of pain; the lean muscles of Lexa’s stomach and back tighten even when Clarke’s fingers brush over uninjured skin. She watches goosebumps rise and for a moment, she’s lost in the temptation to reach up and trace her hands over the swirling tattoo that runs down Lexa’s back, just to see what reaction that produces.

Her lack of focus makes the process take longer than it should and she finishes it up with shaking hands. “There,” she says breathlessly, fumbling with the last of the knots that tie the cloth to Lexa’s side, “You’re…you’re set. It should hold, I’ll change them later, okay?”

“Thank you, Clarke.” She eases her shirt back down over the bandages and grimaces again on the contact, then takes the skull mask Clarke offers out for her. She’d lost it at some point in rescuing Aren from the water. “You—”

Clarke’s already walking away. “We have a two hour march ahead of us, Lexa. Let me know if the bandages start to slip.”

* * *

“The Heda never should have come this far.”

It’s Russ, his low voice in her ear. Despite the fact that she just saved one of their lives, the warriors haven’t forgotten Clarke to be the girl who tore down a mountain and single-handedly destroyed an entire army, so she’s been tied and placed under Russ’s guard once again. He keeps her close as they reach the outskirts of a small mountain village.

“The kid needs medical treatment,” Clarke mutters back, “And so does Lexa.”

“There may be some here who have been south. They may recognize their commander.”

All around them, villagers gather to watch the warriors pass: the bold young men and women stand in the street, between the houses, nodding to their protectors; the more timid watch from the windows of low, dark huts constructed of wood, stone, ancient salvaged scrap medal. It’s not much different from her memories of TonDC—especially the way the villagers glare at her.

Her captors, safe at last in an allied town, have pulled down their hoods and masks, delighting in the company of others after so long in the wild. Clarke’s gaze follows the one warrior who still wears her hood and mask, whose hand flies to her sword at her hip any time someone moves too quickly toward her. Her shoulders hunched, Lexa looks tense enough to snap at any moment. Russ is right. But they have no other choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next were originally supposed to be one long chapter, but I decided to split them up, hence the short length and low development. Bear with me, and look for the next chapter in a few days! I promise that one is worth it. And thank you to all the reviews so far, I honestly did not expect such nice responses.


	4. Chapter 4

 “You’re lucky, do you know that?” She’s talking as if the pale, shaking young man laying on the table is capable of responding. Clarke glances over the medical supplies the village has supplied her with: with a bit of skill, she can pull off a transfusion. She tries to pretend her voice isn’t as shaky as he is. “Incredibly lucky.”

_This is already going better than last time._

Her mother has done this plenty of times before, and the thought both steadies her and spurs her into action. After soaking everything in boiling water, the closest they’ll get to sanitary, Clarke stitches up what she can of the grounder’s wound—she cauterizes what she cannot. Aren passes out from the pain at the first press of hot metal, which is probably for the best because the two men guarding Clarke have blatantly refused to hold him down or assist her in any way.

She pumps him full of blood borrowed from his fellow soldiers, a little at a time, over three hours until she’s trembling with the kind of exhaustion that only comes from frayed nerves and hours of pinpoint focus.

When it’s all over, she sits back at last and the fatigue crashes down over her. “He’ll be alright,” she says, as if the two men guarding her can’t already see that the boy is sleeping calmly and breathing deeply. “Keep him fed, make him drink whenever he wakes up. A few days of rest, and he’ll be okay.”

* * *

Her two burly guards escort her back through the village, flanking her as if her knees aren’t shaking and she actually has the strength or presence of mind to try an escape. It’s like Lexa said. They fear her now.

The sight of her new jail cell is a welcome one: the storage shed is cool and dark, with cords of firewood lining one wall and fifty-gallon barrels stacked against another, partially obscuring the solitary window. She doesn’t protest as the men bind her hands and feet, and she doesn’t make a sound when they throw her unceremoniously into the shed.

In fact, she only cares about one thing: for the first time in over a week, she’s laying down.

Clarke revels in the feeling of her aching body stretched out over the hard-packed earth, even if she is tied. She’s exhausted, anxious, stinking of blood and sweat and mud—everything snaps at once and the feeling of relief that gushes through her veins is what she imagines a morphine high feels like.

Laughter bubbles up out of her, punctuated by strangled, half-delirious sobs.

She’s survived so much; it seems unfair that this is her life now, and that it may very well be her death. Alone. Grateful for the chance to lay down in the dirt. She never said goodbye to her mother. Bellamy would be waiting forever for her return. Raven had been barely conscious when she left.

Night comes faster than sleep, flooding in through the single window and drowning Clarke in pitch-black darkness. It’s the memories of her family and friends keeping unconsciousness at bay, bittersweet and nostalgic as they may be.

Wells, more than any of them, occupies her thoughts tonight. It makes sense, given that she had never had time to properly mourn him, so now his memory is overwhelming in the hours that her own mortality seems so imminent and inescapable.

Wells, loyal to a fault. He had been at her side all their lives—until the end. He died alone after following her down to earth. To protect her, when it should have been the other way around. An inexorable guilt has been lodged in her throat since then. He deserved better.

He let her hate him to save her, and she let him die alone in a strange new world.

The guilt has only built up since then, overflowing past every attempt to staunch it, no different from Aren’s open wound this morning.

 _I barely apologized before he died._ The regret consumes her.

There’s no room for fear when she hears the soft scrape of metal on metal, the sound of the bar outside the door to the shed being lifted. The door creaks open; silhouetted by the torch outside for a brief moment, a figure slips inside and the door closes again, plunging them back into darkness.

She’s too tired for fear, too guilty to care.

“Clarke?”

“Lexa.”

She hears a sigh of relief in the darkness. “Russ, _faya.”_ There’s a grunt from outside.

“Russ lost a brawl at dinner,” Lexa explains, “so he has been assigned to the second guard shift.” Outside, Russ places a lighted torch next to the window, casting just enough light into the shack for Clarke to see the dim outline of Lexa’s face.

“We can speak freely until dawn,” she adds.

 _What is there to talk about?_ Clarke would have remained reticent, unwilling and unable to divulge any of the torrid emotions in her chest, but she remembers her conversation with Russ that morning. Lexa’s not safe here where someone could recognize her.

“You should be on your way back to the Trikru.”

“There are guards posted around the camp. They will see us leave.”

Forever unruffled, Lexa kneels next to Clarke and fumbles in the dark for her wrists. Her hands find the ropes and begin to work the knots.

“I’m not talking about me,” Clarke presses, ignoring Lexa’s actions. “You. You need to get back to your people. You can slip out unnoticed, you’re one of them.”

“I will not leave this village without you,” Lexa replies. Her tone is unchanged.

“You told me once that was weakness.”

“Clarke. If the Ice Nation has a prisoner of war of your power, they gain a serious advantage in the coming war. Likely, your people will side with them in order to get you back. That would bring destruction down on the Trikru and my allies.”

Clarke snorts. “At least you’re consistent.”

“I do what I have to.”

With that, Lexa unwinds the knot and the sudden sensation of freedom in her arms is nearly as great a relief as it was to lay down at last. Clarke releases a heavy sigh of satisfaction—save the emergency medical care, this is the first time she’s been free. It’s enough to soften her to Lexa, if only for a moment.

 “Thank you. For the ropes and for…not leaving me.”

“They will not have you,” Lexa says quietly. “I will not let it happen again.”

 _That_ is weakness, but she decides not to mention it.

In the darkness, Clarke and Lexa are little more than shadows to one another, composed only of their outlines and voices and the occasional flash of firelight reflected in green or blue. Lexa is searching blindly again, running her hand down Clarke’s leg until her fingers find the ropes around her ankles and begin undoing those as well.

Human contact. It’s been so long, she shivers involuntarily. She had forgotten how good it feels. Lexa’s light touch anchors Clarke there in the dark, prevents her from spinning back down into the depths of her own memories.

“Are you feeling alright?” Lexa asks softly when the ropes are finally gone. “I brought food and water, as well.”

They sit together, backs against the pile of firewood, and share the scraps of meat and handful of berries as Lexa describes the rough outline of her plan. The warriors plan to stay in the village for another day, and the guards will be reduced on the second night to rest for the coming march. They’re within a hard day’s march of the Ice Nation capital.

“Tomorrow night, I will be the one who loses the fight at dinner,” Lexa says, “I will take up a guard position.”

“And then we run,” Clarke says.

“And then we run. Russ will hide packs in the trees during tomorrow’s hunting mission. It will be a six day journey back to our people.”

“It’ll be a dangerous six days.” Clarke’s nothing if not pragmatic. “We’ve cut it close, so far in their territory. If we’re caught, we die.”

Lexa shakes her head. “We’re too valuable to die. They will seek information, first. Then they will make our people an offer: the trikru and sky people will go to war, on the promise that the victor will get their leader back. The ice nation and desert people will wipe out what is left, having already won the war without going to battle. Then, we’ll be offered to the soldiers. And then we will die.”

After several minutes of processing that, most of which Clarke spends trying to reconcile Lexa’s lack of emotion, Clarke finds her voice. “You should have left a long time ago.”

“We take the choices that are offered to us.”

Her unaffected tone smacks of the last time she made a choice that nearly ripped Clarke apart; and Clarke wants to get angry at the memory, wants to breathe out words that will make Lexa draw back and end their contact, but god, she’s tired. And the thought of her home being just five days away is enough to quiet everything else in her head.

She thinks of Wells, again. Finn’s voice plays in her mind.

_“He loves you, you know that, right?”_

“Lexa,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

There’s a tangible silence for a long moment. “You…should not be. There is no reason for it.”

“There is. I don’t know what it is. But there is.”

Lexa doesn’t respond but the warmth of her body where they are pressed shoulder to shoulder as they sit against the barrel soothes some of the conflagration of emotions within her. Lexa’s presence suddenly shifts from a force driving Clarke forward, to one comforting her. It’s reminiscent of the hours after they escaped the pauna, when Clarke felt safe to fall asleep under Lexa’s protection. It’s a strange new feeling.

“Does it ever get any easier to live with?” she asks quietly.

Lexa pulls in a long breath. “No.”

“I don’t sleep well anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

There’s a small comfort in that, though for the first time it’s not gloating satisfaction. It’s familiarity. _Someone else understands._

“If you can,” Lexa urges, “You must at least relax and rest your body. Even if the memories keep you awake.”

It’s more easily asked than achieved. “Stay here, until sunrise.” _With me._

“Of course.”

Tentatively, Clarke shifts her body against Lexa’s and Lexa, stiff at first, soon gives in just the right ways, laying back so that Clarke’s head rests on her collarbone and the length of their bodies press together for warmth. It’s safe, soft, calming in its intimacy and isolation, as if the torch that bathes them in dim light is the only thing to exist outside of the shed. Lexa stays awake. Clarke’s eyes flutter shut at last.

* * *

“Clarke.”

The blonde stirs, only to readjust against Lexa’s chest and let herself be once more immobilized by exhaustion. She needs more than a few hours of fitful rest against a warm body to recover from the past week.

 _“Clarke.”_ Though her voice is rough with sleep, there’s an underlying urgency to it. “The sun is rising.”

That jars her awake. Before she can move, her eyes fly open and find the window: the sky outside is indeed tinged grey and pink. The guards will be changing soon, the village will be waking up, questions will be raised about an ice nation warrior spending the night in the cell of a prisoner. Clarke lurches unsteadily to a sitting position.

“You have to go,” she says in alarm.

“We’re safe,” Lexa assures her, with a glance to the door. “Russ has given us five minutes. I need to re-tie your ropes, though.”

Clarke’s heartbeat slows to a normal pace as Lexa winds the rope back around her wrists, spiking only when she notices how slowly Lexa moves, how gentle she’s being. “Lexa,” she presses, impatient, “I’m fine. Just do it before anyone catches you here.”

They both know they’re pushing it as the sky outside continues to lighten. Lexa jumps to her feet and Clarke lays back on the dirt floor of the storage shed.

“Someone should come get you in a few hours, for food and medical care.” Lexa’s strength is returning, her chin drawn high like the leader she is. “I will see you then.”

Clarke nods, somehow equally as noble from the ground. “Go.”

After the commander slips out the door, Clarke stares up at the corrugated tin ceiling of her makeshift cell, miles from sleep now.

It was bizarre how something as simple as human contact could actually make her feel so real and human. Her connection with Lexa is still exceedingly fragile and Clarke isn’t entirely sure if she trusts the commander. But for a few hours, she had found someone she could confide in, someone who understood the things she couldn’t say, someone who didn’t forgive her and didn’t try to heal her. She just lived, right alongside her.

And, even if it were for just those few hours, Lexa had quieted all the ghosts that whispered to Clarke and kept her awake, from her father to Wells to Maya and everyone in between.

However long their lives may be, Clarke will be grateful to her for that.

It seems like only a few minutes later—so maybe she did sleep—when the door opens yet again and a woman enters to heft Clarke to her feet. She kneels to untie the ankle binds. Time for more walking.

“How’s the boy who was hurt?” Clarke asks her. No response.

“I’ll need to give him a second transfusion of blood.”

No response.

“Do I at least get food?”

This time, she receives a shove through the doorway. That’s to be expected, though, and she was really only asking to test her jailer’s patience anyway.

They make their way down the wide path that bisects the village, Clarke dragging her feet because _god_ , she’s sick of being led like an animal or feeling the point of a spear in her back. She’s sick of not sleeping. Of walking on eggshells. Of wondering if each time she looks up at the stars will be her last.

She’s sick of being a victim.

There’s a war to fight, her people to prepare. They must survive despite the odds yet again. And she’s their leader, whether she likes it or not. Though she’s miles away from home and the people she loves, Clarke straightens her back and sets her jaw the way she’s done a thousand times before as she walks behind the grounder.

She wants to send a message: fierce, proud, strong, the sky people are as formidable an enemy as any grounder clan.

At the end of the street, the houses are set farther back and the path widens into something of a central meeting place for the village, with the remains of last night’s bonfire in the center. Gathering in the open area are a half-dozen warriors in fresh, clean furs, readying for the hunting trip. The children of the village are out in full force as well, running between the grounders, chasing each other, laughing, shouting in gleeful Trigedasleng as they smile up at the men.

 _Their heroes,_ Clarke realizes. A few of the men feint towards the kids whenever they get close, broad grins cracking over their faces when the kids shriek with delight and try to dodge away.

Lexa stands among the hunters as well. She cuts a smaller figure, with her hood up and her hand resting on her sheathed weapon, but she stands just as strong and proudly as any of them—if not a little stiff when the children circle around her on quick, bare feet.

Clarke wants to laugh when one of the braver young girls gets too excited escaping from a pursuer and darts past Lexa, yanking on the woman’s coat to maintain her balance. And when Lexa’s hood flies off and reveals a look of pure shock and confusion, Clarke _does_ laugh.

An older villager nearby, also chuckling at the spectacle, steps in and scoops up the little offender, then lifts his head to offer Lexa a grinning apology.

It dies on his face. He stares at her, fear dawning in his eyes.

From the other end of the street, Clarke hears it. “Heda!”

She feels like she’s been punched; she can’t draw in any air. Everything stops.

“Heda!” The man cries again, louder this time, stepping back.

Lexa furrows her brow in confusion and throws a glance at her companions; they’re staring, and she starts to back away slowly with raised hands.

The men visibly attempt to understand. _Not her. Not with the limp, the dirty face, the broken nose, the constant mask of fear. This girl couldn’t be…_

“Heda! Heda!” A woman who steps out of a nearby house takes up the cry, and this time she’s actually pointing as she clambers to the side of the first man. Clarke can see suspicions starting to build among the desert and ice nation warriors, sees them reaching for their weapons as they make the mental connections.

Apparently, Lexa sees that too.

Lexa rips her sword from the sheath at her belt and swings it at the nearest grounder; it bites deep into his side and before she can even start to withdraw it, she throws her body sideways at another warrior, sending him sprawling into the dirt. Children are screaming in fear now, scattering every direction, their high-pitched voices interspersed with the deep, rumbling shouts of the half-dozen men surrounding Lexa as they yell for help.

She pulls her sword from her first victim, lashing out at another, but they’re over their surprise now. The man blocks it with his own sword and Lexa has to duck an attack from her left. As she rises from that, someone thrusts the blunt end of a spear at the back of her head, knocking her off balance. They close in; barely staying on her feet, she swings the sword in a wild arc that pushes them back long enough for her to steady herself.

More and more shouts begin to blend into the cacophony in the air, shouts of terror from the villagers as they flee to safety and shouts from soldiers all over the village as they clatter for their weapons and rush toward the fray.

Anger. Fear. Chaos. And watching it happen from forty yards away is like watching her father behind the glass of the air lock before he was floated. Clarke is helpless: she stumbles a few feet forward, releasing a strangled yell.

At the sound, Lexa freezes and looks up the street to Clarke. Their eyes connect.

Before any of the men surrounding her can take another step forward, Lexa lunges away with startling speed and grace. She turns and sprints down an alleyway behind her and out of sight. The warriors let out war cries better than any they’ve ever given on any of their hunting missions and start the chase. More warriors are running toward the alley now too, roaring with bloodlust.

She has to save her.

It’s only when the grounder woman next to Clarke pulls out her sword that Clarke feels an electric shock jolt through her limbs, spurring her to life. Everything is instinct. This isn’t her father in the airlock. She can do something about this.

She lunges to the left as Lexa had, knocking the woman aside and buying herself a few seconds of a slack rope—she uses the first second to duck and grab a piece of firewood from a nearby stockpile, and the second to turn and swing it as possible at her captor’s head.

It connects with a sickening crack and the woman crumples to the ground.

There’s no time to lose: _Lexa, Lexa, Lexa._ Clarke throws away the now-splintered pieces of wood and grabs the woman’s sword, then ducks out of sight between two houses to start sawing at the ropes around her wrist. She’s frantic, gasping for breath— _Lexa, Lexa, Lexa--_ more than once, her hand slips and she slices it open on the edge of the sword. The blood that spatters might as well not be her own, because she can’t feel it.

The instant her arms are free, Clarke grabs the sword and sprints back into the main section of town, wheeling through the crowd as she tries to delineate the shouts of grounder warriors from the general chaos.

She’s sprinting for the alley Lexa disappeared down when she sees Russ come charging out of a house ahead of her, a spear in each hand. He sees her too, and bellows one of the few phrases in Trigedasleng she does understand: “Hod op!” _Stop._

But she can’t. Not now. She tries to lunge past him but in one lightning-quick movement, Russ drops his spear and closes a hand around the hood of Clarke’s jacket. He rips her back with such force that she goes sprawling to the ground. Her weapon clatters away.

“Run for the forest!” He bellows down at her. “Do not stop, do not come back!”

She’s barely listening, scrambling on all fours for the sword, mind thrumming with her name— _Lexa, Lexa, Lexa_ —clinging to it as if her repetition will guarantee Lexa’s survival long enough for Clarke to get to her, to save her. As long as she gets past Russ first. Her fingers close around the sword and she lurches to her feet, right into his arms. He has her in a vice.

“I have to save her!” she cries desperately.

Russ pulls away to look Clarke in the face. “And she would have to do the same for you and then you will both end up dead. I will save her. We will find you in the forest. Go!”

He gives her another shove that sends her stumbling. She gets her feet under her and, channeling into her legs every ounce of fury and fight and instinct she has built up inside, she tears off into the forest.


	5. Chapter 5

_Run for the forest. Don’t stop._

Her legs churn beneath her, at full extension as she races through the forest.

_Don’t come back._

Trees, boulders, fallen logs are barely blips on the radar; she weaves between the trunks and hurdles obstacles as if this is what she was designed for. Survival. She can play the role of the prey just as well as the predator when it suits her.

_Go south as fast as you can._

Her breathing echoes in her ears, desperate and rasping, but like the still-bleeding cuts on her hands, she can’t feel anything.

_We will find you in the forest. Go!_

When Clarke slows at last, she discovers that she’s left all forms of sanity and consciousness behind and it takes a second for her mind to catch up to her body, during which she stands in a clearing and takes in the desolate stillness of the world around her.

She has no idea how far she’s gone. The forest is dead silent, save her gasping breaths. She’s completely alone.

_Should I go back? Should I keep going?_ The indecision roots her to the spot for several minutes as her breathing slowly catches up to her and beads of sweat collect on her skin, even in the cool morning air. “ _We will find you,”_ Russ had assured her, but surely they would have been here by now. Surely she would have heard them.

Two Trikru warriors, the commander and her most loyal guard, against two dozen soldiers and village militia.

In that instant, it’s not a question of whether she should go back. It’s a question of how Clarke even managed to leave in the first place.

With a groan of frustration, Clarke whirls and sets off again, back the way she came. The sword in her hand doesn’t feel nearly as reassuring as her gun once had, but it’s something and she is more than prepared to swing it at the head of anyone who steps in her way. She barely covers two hundred yards back toward the village, however, when Trigedasleng shouts and battle cries again reach her ears.

She goes her sliding to the forest floor for cover. She presses herself against a nearby tree, listening intently to the sounds of warriors crashing through the undergrowth, calling to each other as they coordinate their attack. She doesn’t know how many there are—could she get around them, back to the village?

It takes a second to realize that the sounds are getting fainter: they’re moving away from her. She hazards a glance around the tree and spots the back of a single grounder as he angles away in a different direction.

After a heartbeat of hesitation, she follows him.

* * *

Unwittingly, the warrior leads Clarke through the trees as he follows the whoops and calls of the grounders ahead of him. Clarke follows at a distance, cautious, but it soon becomes clear that he is making no effort to stay quiet. He’s chasing, not stalking, not hunting. Cold fear starts to fill her chest. If she’s not the target, there’s only one other possible prey.

_“Oso don hon Heda daun!”_

They have her.

She runs harder, but when her grounder catches up with the rest of the group, Clarke stops far short of the clearing they’re in and takes in the chaotic battle scene: five, six, seven grounders spread out in a half-circle around two figures who have backed into a mammoth boulder, trapped. Russ has fallen to one knee, though the threat of the spear he’s brandishing keeps the attackers at bay. Lexa, somehow, is still on her feet. She sweeps her head back and forth, looking for a way out.

Clarke can give her one.

It was the same plan she had had back in the village when Lexa was overwhelmed and now she is much more prepared to put it into action. Clarke is at top speed when she comes crashing into the circle of warriors, so fast that when she swings at the head of the nearest one she damn near misses. She doesn’t look to see where it catches him. Instead, she emulates Lexa’s tactic of abandoning the sword and tackling the woman beside her to the ground.

On the edge of her vision there’s a flash of silver that sends her scrambling through the dirt, all instinct, no senses, just  _move move move._

And then it’s over. Before she can get to her feet, a grounder falls to the ground next to her. Clarke stares at him, then looks up to see Lexa standing over her.

“Fuck.” She coughs the word up and somehow it makes everything feel more real.

Lexa, above her, is wild-eyed with fear and adrenaline, chest heaving, teeth bared in a snarl as if she doesn’t recognize the blonde in front of her. There’s dirt and blood covering her face and hands and chest again, but this is unlike any time Clarke’s ever seen her. Lexa’s in a different world, every sense heightened, every nerve firing. She’s a predator.

Behind her, Russ pulls his spear out of a fallen enemy before taking his place at his commander’s shoulder, looking just as feral as his commander. He hands them both an assortment of weapons without a word. Whatever is in store for them, it will not be an easy fight, and they need to prepare.

“Can you run?” Lexa asks, reaching down and lifting Clarke to her feet.

Clarke nods.

“Then we need to run.”

* * *

Four months ago, Clarke Griffin was in solitary confinement aboard a dying space station, longing for the imagined asylum of the green earth below her. Now she’s sprinting over that earth, watching it blur past her, the threat of being deep in enemy territory overwhelming all other sensation.

Survival is a strange thing.

She has no idea how far they have run—only that it’s not far enough—when Lexa finally slows ahead of her. The three of them stop near a bend in a small creek, hands on their knees, drawing in ragged breaths for several minutes.

“We cannot stay for long,” Lexa warns them at last. Her pupils are still blown wide with adrenaline but the bloodlust faded while they ran. “We may have escaped them for now, but they’ll have riders. And even if we do manage to evade the riders, they will march south as soon as possible, to attack before we can return and prepare.”

Clarke’s legs shake beneath her. She kneels at the water’s edge and scoops a few handfuls of water to her lips. “How long will it take to get back?” she asks.

“Six days on foot. We cannot afford to linger here.”

“I should have been by your side in the village this morning,” Russ tells his commander. His head is bowed, his voice heavy with regret.

“The fault is not yours, Russ,” Lexa replies calmly, “so do not think of my next request as a punishment.”

Russ lifts his head, confused.

“I need you to go east, to Polis.” She has to raise her voice over his immediate protest. “Russ. The leaders and generals there will need to know what has happened, and any able warriors who still value the coalition will be ordered to assemble two miles north of TonDC.”

“Polis is safe,” Russ argues, “And closer. You can gather your supporters there and strike from the east when they enemy marches south to the trikru.”

“There is no time. They will be marching immediately and I need to prepare my people for the defense while you rally support from Polis. I will send a rider with instructions when I arrive. And,” she adds, with a glance to Clarke, “There are no sky person representatives in Polis. We require their support, so Clarke must return safely to the south.”

“We should not separate,” Russ growls, because he knows the argument is lost.

“I value your loyalty, Russ. But we have already wasted too much time discussing this. Go.”

Every muscle in his body is stiff when he gives Lexa a curt nod. Loathing of his task lines his face.

“Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim,” Lexa tells him.

“Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim.” He stands for a second as if she will rescind her order; when she maintains her level stare, Russ nods again and sets off toward the morning sun.

Clarke gets to her feet and the two women watch him go until he disappears between the trees. “Mebi oso na hit chod op…nodotem,” Clarke murmurs. “What does that mean?”

“Choda op nodotam,” Lexa corrects her softly, then pauses. “May we meet again.”

* * *

Six days. She can’t remember exactly how many days it has been since she left Camp Jaha, but now she counts every hour until she can return. Six days.

Sometimes, their progress is stunning. Lexa and Clarke hit their stride not long after Russ leaves them and hold a strong pace, several miles melting away beneath their feet. They waste no breath on conversation, understanding the mutual drive to get back to their people before the war starts.

And sometimes, progress is slower. Lexa will point out a landmark a few hundred yards away—a ridge, a gnarled tree, a bend in the river—and send Clarke running toward it. She always meets Clarke there a few minutes later, but only after she has deviated from the path, crossed it, recrossed it, backtracked, forged into the forest hacking at the bushes with her sword, even starting small fires when it suits her. It makes life hell for anyone tracking them, but it also takes hours to cover just a few miles.

When Lexa is satisfied with their destroyed trail, they raise the pace to run again.

That night, they make camp halfway up a rocky hillside that is nearly impossible to climb without making plenty of noise. Clarke immediately rejects Lexa’s offer to take the watch for the entire night. The risk of a fire is too great, so Clarke stays up in the dark, sleep held at bay by freezing winds.

When the sun rises, so do they. Exhausted, sore, starving, they have no choice but to set off at a run again.

* * *

“I have been this far north only twice before,” Lexa says, during one of their slower periods the next day. They’ve been walking for nearly a half hour, recovering from an uphill run. The mountainous territory was bound to slow them eventually.

“Don’t tell me that means we’re lost.”

She receives a disparaging glance. “No. The forest here may be unfamiliar but I understand the landscape. As long as we continue south and west, we will make it safely home.”

Clarke nods and checks the sun again. It’s directly overhead. Useless for determining direction, but Lexa seems confident.

“Why were you so far north, Clarke?” Lexa asks her.

“I was…” Truthfully, Clarke didn’t have a name for the tug in her stomach that drove her away from safety what feels like a lifetime ago. “I needed space to think. I needed to figure out how to live down here, and I couldn’t do that with everyone else around me.”

“Did it work?”

Clarke shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it since I’ve been captured.”

“Then perhaps it did.”

“This wasn’t really what I was looking for when I left.”

“But the result is similar. Maybe it should not matter how we survive, as long as we do.”

She starts to respond—there has to be more to it than that, she was raised differently than that—but Lexa silences her by reaching out and wrapping her slender fingers around Clarke’s upper arm, and pulling her to a stop. There’s an urgency in the motion and a firmness in her grip that forces Clarke’s heart up into her throat, but Lexa presses close and the feeling of her body is strangely reassuring.

Lexa looks sideways at her, then upward to the trees.  _Quiet._   _Listen._ For a moment all Clarke can hear is her own heart and Lexa’s shallow breath in her ear.

Then she hears it. Voices, faint but distinct. Male. Ahead of them.

“Follow me, carefully,” Lexa breathes.

On padded feet, Lexa pulls her across the forest floor and down behind a dense thicket of brush; they hold there, without breathing, without moving, for several seconds while the faint voices continue uninterrupted. At last, with a motion for Clarke to follow her, Lexa rises slightly and looks out over the top of the bushes.

“There,” she says, pointing suddenly at a movement in the distance. It’s a small group, in and out of sight between the trees, but the bright white and blue furs of the Ice Nation stand out among the earth tones of their surroundings. “It was always our advantage,” Lexa murmurs to herself, and then to Clarke, “They’re coming in this direction. We will have to attack once they get close.”

“Can’t we wait for them to pass?”

“The Ice Nation rely on hunting for survival in the north. In battle, they’re excellent at range. If they see us while they are hunting, we will be dead before we realize it.”

Clarke lifts her head above the foliage again and counts five white furs, still steadily approaching. “Can we take down five?”

She hears the hint of a smile in Lexa’s voice. “I can.”

The nearly silent crunch of leaves snaps Clarke’s attention to the side and she has to bite back a hiss of surprise when she sees that Lexa is already ten yards away. She’s bent nearly double and moving with the fluid menace of a panther, knives in both hands. She circles to the left, out of sight.

Clarke wills herself to move as the hunters’ footsteps get closer, but the sound roots her to the spot. She reaches down and grips the handle of her sword until her knuckles are white.

Then she hears a yelp, and a thud. She jumps to her feet in time to see Lexa pull one knife from a fallen warrior as she slashes at the neck of a second with her opposite hand. He drops, too. She lashes out with a kick to the lower legs of another, leveling him; before he can stand again, she has thrown her knife at the only warrior out of her range and turned back to finish him on the ground.

Only two of the soldiers even managed to draw their weapons, let alone raise them against her. It’s over in fifteen seconds. It takes longer for Clarke to remember how to walk forward.

By the time she approaches, Lexa stands wiping her knives on her dirty, stolen Ice Nation furs, frowning as if it’s an inconvenience to dirty them more.

She stops well short of the bodies and gives Lexa a pointed look. “I could have helped you.”

“I could not afford hesitation,” Lexa replies with a shrug. “Before I became the commander, the warriors in my village trained me to use the environment and my speed to my advantage. That is where the Trikru’s strength lies.”

“Guerilla warfare,” Clarke mutters. She ignores Lexa’s questioning glance. They had proved devastatingly effective at it during the early days of the dropship. “Do they have anything on them?”

Lexa nudges one of the bodies with her toe, rolling him over, but the reality is already clear: “Nothing.”

“We need supplies, Lexa.” Trying to scrounge berries along the journey had proven largely unsuccessful, and they still had five days ahead of them.

“I will look for their camp. Stay here, search the pouches for anything we might use.”

Clarke takes a minute to steel herself as Lexa bounds off, still preternaturally silent, before she kneels and begins searching the men for supplies. Nothing…which means they can’t have been far from the camp. Clarke turns her eyes away from the bodies and sits back, leaning against a tree to wait for Lexa.

She’s only gone a few minutes before she comes trotting back down a nearby hill, giving Clarke a brisk nod. “The camp is to the southwest. We can wait until nightfall, when any other hunters have returned, and move past it. Hopefully we will be outside of their range by dawn.”

“Or we could surprise them in the night.”

“You want to attack?” Lexa asks in surprise. “Clarke—”

“Do you think we could do it?”

Lexa stares into the distance, as if she can see the camp from miles away. “They’re a forward scout group,” she says, “They don’t know the terrain. However, since their fellow soldiers will not have returned, they will be on guard. We will need to plan any attack thoroughly.”

“You said it yourself: they’re hunters. When they find these bodies, they'll be coming after us. I don't want to, but we need to do it."

“Yes. But it will add more than a half day to our journey home.”

“We also need the supplies. And if we can eliminate one of their scout groups, it will help us in the long run.”

Lexa nods.

“Let’s do it,” Clarke says, setting her jaw.

* * *

The threat of other ice nation hunters slows their trek through the forest to a cautious crawl, but soon enough the predators become prey when Clarke and Lexa make their way to the top of a rocky bluff and look down on the scout camp. It’s smaller than the one that captured her, and there’s not much movement. Nothing to study, yet.

“We’ll be here a while, until they take up the guard positions,” Lexa says, sitting back against a boulder. “We should rest.”

Easier said than done. Lexa closes her eyes and seems relaxed enough, a talent Clarke has yet to master. Still, she takes a seat facing the other woman and does what she can.

Night falls fast and the wind kicks up, especially cold and vicious up on the bluff, but it wakes and refreshes them better than a nap could have. Clarke and Lexa lay on their stomachs behind some boulders and begin their recon, first with their escape route.

“There.” Lexa points and Clarke has to shift closer to her to see the route she’s delineating. “If we need to, we will head downhill, to the creek, and follow it downstream.” She points to a silver ribbon that snakes between the trees, reflecting the full moon above. “Anything uphill or over this terrain will tire us too quickly for us to get out of their range.”

“We should cross the creek when we get to it, before going downstream,” Clarke suggests. “There’s more vegetation on that side, it’ll be harder for them to hit us from range if they can’t see us behind it.”

Lexa gives her a small smile, something like pride in her eyes. “Agreed.”

Clarke has no further suggestions as she listens to Lexa strategize—in fact, she’s not entirely sure Lexa is talking to her, but rather just thinking aloud. She points out the locations of the four guards and the breaks in their line of sight, the clumps of sleeping warriors around the glowing embers of their campfire, and the route she’ll attack from: north, as it will provide the most cover and shadow.

“What should I do?” Clarke asks.

Lexa drags her finger across the vista to point to a fallen tree on the west side of the camp. “Watch from there. Should any of them wake before I get to them, you will alert me and we will run.”

Part of Clarke wants to argue her worth, but another part of her wonders if she would be able to stand by Lexa’s side and kill sleeping men and women without hesitation, necessary as it may be. She bites back her retort, but she can’t hold back the new thought takes its place on her tongue.

“Why did you think I would have hesitated to kill the hunters this afternoon?”

Lexa sits back, pulling out her knife and thumbing the blade. “I trust you, Clarke. But like I said, I could not afford hesitation. Sometimes killing someone is a difficult decision, and I have gained the necessary experience to make difficult decisions quickly. As you experienced on the mountain. It no longer weighs on my conscience.”

There’s a bitter twist in her words at the end, but her eyes are steel when they flick up from the knife to gauge Clarke’s reaction.

For a moment, the same old anger flares up in Clarke’s chest—but then it fades away just as quickly. Even if she wanted to nurture that burn, she couldn’t, because she suddenly understands.

“Lexa.” She pulls her gaze up from the knife again.

“I understand what you did on the mountain,” Clarke says. “I don’t hate you for it. I never did. I just…I needed to feel like I did so that I didn’t hate myself.”

She raises her chin, searching Clarke’s face for a response, but Clarke isn’t done.

“Thank you for letting me hate you. For trying to make me hate you. I don’t know if I could have gotten through being a prisoner without that. But it was wrong of me to need it.”

“Your survival is more important to me than your affection,” Lexa replies quietly.

“But that’s not how I want to survive,” Clarke insists with a shake of her head. “So I’m sorry.”

Lexa opens her mouth, ready to brush away the apology with her usual dignity and detachment, so Clarke presses harder because if she doesn’t get it out now, she never will. “No. Listen. My best friend…he did the same thing for me. He let me hate him for something that he didn’t do, something he didn’t deserve to be hated for. I only found out the truth right before he died. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“What was his name?”

“Wells.”

“Wells,” Lexa repeats, committing it to memory. She inclines her head; the next question is obvious.

“He…” The words catch in her throat. “I thought he was responsible for the arrest and execution of my father. It wasn’t him; it was my mother. And he knew it, but he let me hate him so I could still love her.”

“Your father was executed by your people?”

“For treason. My father knew the Ark was running out of air, and he was going to reveal the truth to the people. They would have panicked. It would have been chaos. My mother couldn’t let it happen. She reported him. They executed him.”

“I’m sorry, Clarke.” When Clarke busies herself scraping dirt from beneath her fingernails, Lexa speaks up again. “Dying for one’s people is a very noble death for a leader. He died well.”

“He wasn’t a leader.”

“He was not the leader of the sky people before you?” Lexa asks, suddenly confused.

Clarke almost laughs and for a second the last memories of her father don’t hang as heavy from her heart. “He was an engineer. He kept everything running,” she explains. “I was supposed to be a doctor, like my mother. I wasn’t supposed to be…none of this was supposed to happen this way.”

If she’s at all confused by the customs of the Sky People, Lexa doesn’t show it. Instead, she drops her voice lower, softer. “My people believe differently, Clarke. When we return, you should speak to them.” When Clarke furrows her brow, Lexa explains further. “You came to us from the sky, you withstood our attacks, allied yourself with the commander, and destroyed our enemies even without us at your side. They believe this is exactly how it was supposed to happen.”

“What do you believe?” Clarke asks softly.

“This.” Lexa gestures at the world around them, at the camp, at their situation. “My role is to serve my people, however I can, in each life, without concerning myself with the past or future. That is all I have.”

Clarke bites her lower lip. “Seems…empty.”

“So is life. We all have our ways of surviving it.”

“I’m still figuring out mine.”

The night air around them is heavy with everything Clarke suddenly wants to say and the questions she wants to ask: how many times has Lexa had to face this reality before she learned how to do it without shaking, who faced it for her before she could, why she feels the need to face it for Clarke now.

Lexa, for her part, has the same curiosity on the tip of her tongue, and the same inability to breathe life to it. The two women hold each other’s gazes for a long moment, until—

“The moon is low enough,” Lexa says, abruptly jumping to her feet. “We need to move.” She doesn’t wait for Clarke to scramble upright before she starts back down the rocky hillside, seeming to glide down over the terrain. Clarke has more difficulty picking her way down, especially since her legs are stiff and sore from hours of trying to get comfortable among the rocks on the bluff, but Lexa’s white and grey clothes reflect the moonlight, making her easy to track.

Too easy to track.

“Wait, wait.” Clarke gets to the base of the hill and drops to a crouch next to a stagnant puddle of water that she had noted it on their way up hours before. “When Anya and I escaped the mountain and they chased us, she covered me in mud to help disguise us.” She dips her hand into the soft silt and looks up at Lexa. “It’ll—”

Lexa’s smiling.

_Grinning,_ Clarke immediately amends, as she watches Lexa try and fail to suppress her amusement.

“What’s so funny?” Clarke demands.

“That was a favorite tactic of Anya’s,” Lexa explains, “even when it was not entirely necessary. As her second, I often had to suffer it when I misbehaved or made a mistake. I’m sure she took pleasure in using it against you, even if the situation required it.”

And there’s such delight on her face at the mental image that for a second, a dumbfounded Clarke forgets where they are. She has to resist the urge to fling the mud up at the deadly grounder commander.

She chooses the high road instead and stands, wiping her hands on her pants. “Fine, then,” she says, tightly. “Then we should get going, get this done.”

“No, Clarke, wait.” Lexa regains her repose. “You’re right: the moon will catch the white of our clothes. Covering them with the mud is a good strategy. We should use it.”

As they kneel and smear mud over their clothes, Clarke very determinedly avoids looking at Lexa; on the few occasions the desire overpowers her, she spots a tiny smile on Lexa’s lips and grits her teeth.

When they finish and stand, though, they both see the merit in the idea. The mud has obliterated the white of the furs, so that rather than reflecting the light of the moon, Clarke and Lexa are no more than shadows against the earth. In addition, the mud Lexa has coated on her face is reminiscent of her usual war paint. Suddenly, she looks twice as dangerous, no longer the wounded ice nation warrior, but the tru Trikru commander again, tall and proud and lethal. Clarke’s heart begins to pound at the sight.

“Ready?” Lexa asks.

“Ready.”

* * *

With every step, the adrenaline in her system builds, pressurizing in her stomach, leaving less and less room for her lungs to expand until it feels like she’s not breathing at all and she’s dizzy with the anticipation. There’s fear, too, and it sharpens her senses, widens her pupils. She forces herself to follow Lexa’s slow, even breathing.

They separate twenty yards west of the camp, with Clarke climbing onto a massive fallen tree for her scout position and Lexa disappearing into the darkness. Had they not scouted the area from the bluff, Clarke would barely be able to see anything save the red glow of the dying campfire; as it is, she picks out the four guards at their positions, barely visible in the low light.

Clarke begins counting.

When she gets to fifty-three, the shape of the first guard crumples to the ground noiselessly. An odd thrill shoots through her.

Sixty-eight. The second guard drops. Clarke couldn’t even see Lexa in the darkness.

Another sixty seconds pass this time as Lexa circles back into the safety of her cover, and this time Clarke spots her as she emerges from the foliage behind the third guard. When she grabs him, he lets out a soft grunt as he hits the ground.

It’s enough to draw the attention of the final guard. He stiffens, looking back and forth, listening, turning toward the body of his fallen comrade—

And then Clarke scrapes her sword against the bark of the fallen tree and the man whips back around at the noise. Lexa closes the thirty yard gap between her and the guard in what seems like a single bound and hits him from behind, bringing him to his knees and then lowering him softly to the ground.

Clarke lets herself breathe at last as Lexa slips into the camp, now silhouetted against the fire. She’s swift and precise, noiselessly eliminating the first group of sleeping warriors in the space of five seconds. Then she takes out the one nearest the fire

Clarke is morbidly enthralled with Lexa’s abilities, so much so that she doesn’t see the shadow of a fallen guard stand and lurch into camp until he crosses in front of the fire, toward Lexa’s back. There’s the glint of a weapon in his hands—Clarke waits, Lexa has to have heard his heavy footsteps, his labored breathing—but when he is only feet from her and lifting the weapon above his head, the yelp jumps from her throat of its own accord.

“Lexa!”

She whips around and manages to jump clear of the blow, stumbling backward across the embers of the fire and sending the smoldering logs in all directions; sparks fly into the air and the campsite becomes a mess of dancing shadows as more figures rise from the ground, adding to the confusion. She can’t see Lexa in the pseudo-darkness anymore, but the sounds of a fight are clear. Clarke slides off the fallen tree, stumbling when she drops to the ground, and sprints forward.

Closer now, she finds Lexa again and sees her drop two of the four men remaining. They agreed that they would run if this happened, but Lexa is standing, fighting, trying to hold off the last two warriors. She scores a glancing blow on one, knocking him back, then attacks the other with full force. She’s too fast for him—even though he manages a heavy swing with a spear, she avoids the point and catches the blunt strike on her arm. She yanks the spear away, slashes with her sword, and she drops.

Clarke comes peeling into the camp clearing as Lexa turns to attack the final warrior. There’s no one there.

“He ran!” Clarke shouts, streaking past Lexa in the direction the wounded man escaped. “Come on!”

She doesn’t bother to stop and wait for the commander, but hears heavy footsteps following her after several seconds. “Clarke!” Lexa calls through the trees.

“This way!” Clarke shouts back.

Clarke slides to a stop and Lexa suddenly appears, bow in hand. They stand back to back, searching…

“There!” She points at a form darting through the trees and Lexa whirls and looses an arrow into the darkness. The man drops but a single arrow isn’t a guarantee; they sprint forward, Lexa releasing another arrow into the fallen body when they get close, just to be sure. It’s unnecessary, in the end.

It’s over. The forest is silent once more. Clarke drops her sword in relief. They’re safe, they’ll have food, they’ll have a dozen fewer pursuers to worry about. She and Lexa have defied the odds again.

“Are you alright?” Lexa asks, panting.

“Fine. You?”

She nods. “You did well, Clarke.”

The adrenaline hasn’t ebbed yet, hasn’t bled out of her veins. In fact, if anything, it’s raging now, tearing through her, still tinged with fear and bloodlust and the burn of oxygen deprivation in her chest, and it’s amplified with the way Lexa seems to glow with victory in the moonlight. The way Lexa can look like that after a battle and a chase and still compliment  _her._

When Clarke reaches out and takes firm hold of the muddy, bloodstained front of Lexa’s armor, it’s all instinct.

It’s a conscious choice when she tightens the grip and pulls Lexa to her and kisses her hard, on the mouth.

Relief numbs everything else and Clarke  _knows_ this feeling is better than a morphine rush. As hard as Lexa’s body is against Clarke’s, her lips are soft, pliant, giving as she kisses back, causing gratitude to soar in Clarke’s chest. She  _needs_ this. She needs the contact, needs the catharsis, needs to give herself to someone like this. And Lexa willingly takes it all.

Clarke deepens the kiss, angling her head and drawing Lexa closer, searching for more. Lexa responds by lifting her hands to Clarke’s hips and digging in. A groan sounds in the back of Clarke’s throat. Neither woman has managed to catch her breath and they’re still fighting for air, gasping for it as the kiss grows messy and heated. They clutch each other closer.

There’s something more than adrenaline running through her veins now. Her world is spinning.

Lexa is the one who breaks away first. Clarke pushes in for another kiss, opening her eyes in confusion when Lexa edges out of reach of her lips.

Lexa keeps her eyes closed.

Her voice is hoarse when she finally speaks. “We still have miles to go, Clarke,” she says, before falling away and turning back to the camp. Clarke can’t feel anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An action-heavy chapter, which may have dragged it down a bit at times but I tried my best to write non-repetitive action. Not my favorite to write. In any case, it opens up the next chapter for more interaction that is much more interesting. Thanks again for the feedback and comments!


	6. Chapter 6

When Clarke wakes up the next morning, Lexa is gone.

It's not an immediate discovery. Clarke opens her eyes and throws an arm over her face to block out the sun, high in the cloudless sky and soaking the forest clearing with heat. Sweat covers her skin from sleeping so long beneath it, so she kicks off her blankets and lays in the open air for a few minutes, adjusting to the discomfort of consciousness.

Only once she fully wakes up does she look over and realize that Lexa's bedroll, on the other side of camp, is empty. Clarke remembers little of last night: flashes of the attack on the camp, of fumbling through the darkness for supplies afterward, of laying out their scavenged bedrolls in a safer position on the bank of a nearby creek. She had been so exhausted, she didn't remember laying down to sleep. But she remembers Lexa being there.

Panic rises, but she's grown logical over the past several months: she didn't sleep so deeply that she would have slept through an attack, and no enemy would have taken Commander Lexa without also taking the leader of the Sky People. Clarke sits up, surveying the surrounding woods, and resolves to wait.

The only sounds for several minutes are the buzzing of insects among the trees, and the muted rustle of water over rocks in the creek a few feet away.

She runs a hand over the furs they had taken from the grounder camp the night before. They hadn't been able to find much, just the two bedrolls and a few scraps of food...but it was miraculous what a few hours of half-decent, comfortable sleep and a full meal will do for a body.

And Clarke's sure Lexa would never admit it, but even the great commander tires sometimes.

After nearly a half hour of waiting, Clarke is starting to consider the merits of panicking when the sounds of long, purposeful strides meet her ears and she feels a rush of relief. She doesn't have to look; even if she hadn't spent the last two weeks traveling at Lexa's side, some people just have a sound about them.

"Where'd you go?" she asks when she hears the footsteps hit the clearing.

"Back to the camp." She turns at the sound of two dull thuds, and sees the two packs Lexa has dumped on the ground. The commander kneels and begins emptying them of her spoils of war. "It was impossible to find anything useful in the darkness last night."

Clarke thumbs her bedroll again, disagreeing. Little luxuries. "You could have woken me," she replies, though her offers of assistance have fallen on deaf ears for so long that she now only offers out of habit.

True to form, Lexa doesn't reply; she starts tossing supplies to Clarke's side of the camp instead.

A pair of boots catch Clarke's eye. She leans over and picks up one, realizing that it's probably small enough to fit her. "There were women in the camp?"

"No," Lexa says, mostly to the ground. "Young men. Boys, really."

"Fodder for war." Her stomach tightens and she lets the boot fall. She wonders if the boy she saved, Aren, made it through the night.

"It gives me no pleasure to kill my own people," Lexa admits quietly. "Even in war."

"I know."

It’s easy to repeat the aphorisms Lexa gives her any time Clarke falters; it feels like she breathes them out on every exhale. Instead, Clarke focuses on tightening her spine, dropping her shoulders, trying to emulate some of the dignity with which Lexa carries her own demons.

It helps.

Lexa drops her head and returns to sorting the supplies while Clarke pulls her pile toward her. Besides the boots, there's not much: a worn, brown leather jacket, a metal chest plate, a shoulder guard not unlike Lexa's. All of it is rather worn and promises to fit her poorly, but compared to her own clothes--caked in mud, threadbare, bloodstained, her boots ripping away from the sole--it's a good start. With a sigh, she levers herself to her feet and strips off her old gear.

More than once, she winces as her stiff muscles stretch or she grazes a bruise or cut.

"Do I look okay?" she says, managing a weak laugh once she’s tightened the new armor around her shoulders.

Lexa gives her a once over and seems to miss the fact that it was a joke. "You look like one of us, Clarke of the Sky People."

She doesn't really have a response for that.

The grounder camp didn’t have much food—Lexa had killed the hunting party the day before, after all—they have just enough for a few days if they ration it. The two women know they will go hungry again before they reach the Ark. For breakfast, they split a small pouch of berries and a few strips of dried beef before heaving their new packs onto their shoulders and setting off into the trees again.

* * *

The new gear hangs as loosely from her body as she thought it would, but it is a surprising relief to have clean clothes again, almost as much as a stomach full of food and uninterrupted hours of sleep. She feels good, body and mind. And when Lexa and Clarke stop at a small eddy to wash away the streaks of dirt and blood from their exposed skin and cool themselves in the sun, Clarke comes dangerously close to enjoying herself.

She begins to recognize the trees around them as well, further lifting her spirits. The territory is still unfamiliar—they’re on the wrong side of a series of small mountains—but hiking through the greenery now brings up memories of their first days on earth. In fact, as she and Lexa lower themselves down a steep slope using vines like the ones Jasper used to swing across the river that first day, Clarke can’t help but smile.

She’s still grinning when Lexa, panting with the exertion, gets to level ground and looks back at her. Lexa’s face twists in confusion but she learned a while ago not to ask what has Clarke of the Sky People so amused.

Nevertheless, even Lexa seems lighter now that she’s in familiar territory.

The two women set a good pace, no longer hunted by enemies who have fallen too far behind them. At the same time, they’re driven forward on strong legs by a determination to finish this race, make it through the final few days separating them from home.

By nightfall, Lexa is secure enough in the distance they created and the route they have traveled to build a fire in their campsite. They have nothing to cook, and Lexa refuses to let the fire burn while they sleep “unless you would prefer it signals any potential threats to attack us while are vulnerable” but having light in the darkness for the first time is all that matters.

As soon as Clarke finds a comfortable position in the bedroll, the fire warm at her back, she’s searching for sleep.

Instead, she finds the images she thought she left behind.

The coming war. The death she’s already caused, the death she will cause when she returns home. Kissing Lexa the night before.

It all seems like the same thing at this point. The burn is the same, and it will not let her rest.

She’s walked for miles, yes, but now that she’s no longer a prisoner and no longer in immediate danger, she isn’t exhausted enough to be able to slip into unconsciousness. It was the same before she was captured when she was wandering the forest.

Clarke heaves a sigh of resignation, closing her eyes, and waits to hear the crackle of the fire fade away as Lexa stomps it down for the night.

And waits.

And waits.

The fire still burns.

“What are you doing?” she asks finally, voice heavy with sleep that is nowhere near. “I thought we weren’t taking guard shifts anymore. Go to bed.”

No guard shifts was another of Lexa’s permissions, and Clarke is even more appreciative of this one. It means another night of full sleep for both of them, and a longer hike tomorrow.

That is, _if_ Lexa were to put out the fire and go to sleep, and _if_ Clarke could do the same. But Lexa seems like she’s taking the guard shift anyway. Clarke rolls over and fixes her with a warning glare.

“We’re not,” Lexa tells her, sitting on a fallen log. “You can sleep. I need to plan the war to come.”

She hesitates for a moment, then sits up straighter and lets the furs fall to her waist. “What are you planning?”

Lexa drags the end of a twig through the dirt, shaping rough outlines and arrows in the clear space in front of the fire. “First, we anticipate the objective of the enemy. Then we find our advantages against them. Then we use them.”

It’s enticing enough for Clarke to slide out of her blankets and take a seat next to Lexa, so that she can see the drawings in the dirt. “Alright, then” she says, intrigued, “What’s their objective?”

“Since we have only begun to rebuild TonDC,” Lexa explains, “the likely target is a village slightly east of there. It’s of a similar size, and about a half day’s walk from the Ark. The Ice Nation prefers to eliminate central positions of power and scatter the Trikru to our various small villages. Conquering and maintaining ground is easier that way, with their superior numbers.”

“But you can’t know that they’re targeting that village.”

“You’re right. But if I were Ice Nation, attacking the commander, I would attack her home village. So that is what I assume they will do.”

“They’re going to attack _your_ village?”

“Yes. I have spent more time in the capitol since becoming commander, and among the smaller villages, but that is where I was born and selected to lead my people.”

“If they’re targeting it, then we should be moving now,” Clarke demands, sputtering in disbelief at Lexa’s smooth, untroubled face. “We need whatever extra time we can get.”

“Clarke. Stop.” Lexa remains the picture of dignity. Sometimes, she’s no more than a marble statue and it always leaves Clarke stunned. “I will not allow it to become more important than any other possible targets. If I do, I will hurry, I will panic, I will overextend myself trying to protect it. And if our enemies do attack it, my response will be emotional. I cannot let that happen. We must stay immune to whatever pressure we face. That is our advantage.”

Falling silent, pursing her lips to tamp down her irritation, Clarke studies Lexa’s designs without understanding them. “Fine. Is it our only advantage?”

Lexa detects the sarcasm and returns it with her own. “I am young, Clarke, but I have just enough experience to march into war armed with more than emotional detachment.”

“What’s your plan, then?”

A smile breaks over Lexa’s face. “Us.”

“Us?”

“Yes. The Ice Nation and Desert People who had you—us—captive do not know how far we have made it. We should be able to return and prepare the Trikru and remaining allies for a battle the Ice Nation is not suspecting. They would have hoped to hit while I was not able to lead my people. But we will now be able to both defend and attack before they are ready.”

“And you have us,” Clarke offers, “The Sky People. Our technology will be an advantage.”

The smile that lit up Lexa’s features vanishes suddenly, replaced by doubt. “Your people will not want to march with me following my betrayal on the mountain. The Sky People’s neutrality in the matter is all I can hope for.”

“If the Ice Nation defeats you, we’re next. Our people will help,” Clarke insists, studying the drawings on the ground, “I’ll get them to help. When I do…what’s the third step?”

“I am not sure yet,” she admits. “The process, however, relaxes me. When I can’t sleep.”

Lexa returns her attention to the plans, falling silent in concentration, while Clarke instead studies the line of Lexa’s profile. She can see the hunger in Lexa’s gaze as her eyes flick back and forth, focused, intense, and she understands: Lexa is protecting her people, all the time, however she can. There’s no time to spare thoughts on the decisions she made to protect them in the past.

It’s an enticing thought.

“Let’s figure it out, then,” she says, notions of sleep gone.

The fire burns low hours later, leaving them in near darkness by the time they have the first traces of a plan. Clarke fights back yawns—it’s Lexa who points out that the majority of the trek tomorrow is uphill through rocky terrain, and they’ll both need legs and mental focus for it.

Reluctantly, Clarke curls into her bedroll. Her mind hums with activity.

“When you pull the Trikru army out of the village, should we—”

“Tomorrow, Clarke,” Lexa growls in the darkness.

“No, hear me out—”

“This process was supposed to help us to sleep, Clarke. You are doing the opposite.”

Clarke falls into a surly silence that Lexa takes as acceptance, and adds, “We have four days to strengthen this plan. We will discuss more tomorrow.”

“It’s we, now, is it? I thought you could only hope for neutrality from the Sky People.”

 _Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Clarke._ Clarke grins in the darkness.

“Perhaps...I was wrong,” Lexa replies instead. “If you could learn to trust me again the way you have, perhaps the Sky People can as well. We will talk more in the morning.”

* * *

The day’s hike—uphill, over the last of the mountains that separates them from Trikru territory—burns their legs as much as their lungs and they mutually decide to skip the strategizing in order to save their breath. The silence allows both women plenty of time with their thoughts. By the time they make camp near the top of peak, they have more warfare discussion to share with one another than they have food.

“It’s simple,” Lexa says, eyes afire as she tears apart the final strips of dried meat. She hands the bigger sections to Clarke and keeps talking. “As you have learned, if you know your enemy, you can defeat him. Our victory will hinge on our knowledge of the Ice Nation and Desert People.

“The Ice Nation hunt for survival, as I have said. They are very good at range. In war, the send overwhelming numbers forward, but these fighters are often unskilled, young, weak. They engage the enemy, while the stronger units remain in the back and attack safely from a distance. The desert people and the mountain tribe are not as powerful but their numbers will assist the forward ice nation warriors, alleviating losses there. This is how they will approach the attack of the village.”

“So we have to avoid engaging them from the front,” Clarke finishes for her.

“Exactly. They are strongest in the front. We will use the element of surprise and avoid them this way.”

This time, they fall asleep on top of their bedrolls, next to each other instead of on opposite sides of the camp, arguing the merits of having the Trikru attack from one direction and the Sky People from the other— “They’ll never expect it” “The crossfire from your guns will endanger our allies.”

The conversation continues the next day as soon as they finish the uphill climb and they have enough oxygen to talk again.

Between discussing troop movements, Lexa teaches Clarke about the different clans and their stories; their leaders; how, willingly or otherwise, they entered into an alliance with her. There are three who have likely turned on her: the ice nation, the desert people, and the mountain tribe.

It’s only those three, she explains, or else they would have already attacked instead of gathering their forces at the Ice Nation capital in the north.

They may be fiercer warriors, but her allies have access to better resources. “It’s the source of the discord in the first place,” she adds. “The previous two commanders have been from these clans and it has bred resentment in the clans farther north, who must rely on sometimes unfair trade.”

The plan for the war develops as they talk through the nights over the fire, taking turns chiseling away at the vague ideas they come up with during the days. They refine it, polish it, spot a flaw, toss it away, begin again, arguing or agreeing each time the wind changes.

It’s Lexa, naturally, who comes up with the final plan to attack the west flank of the approaching army.

Clarke counters with the suggestion that the sky people will bolster the defense of the village, which Lexa wants to use as bait for the attackers so the flank is left open. The Skykru technology can help with the overwhelming numbers.

Lexa is reluctant to agree. But, as Clarke points out, they need to buy time until Lexa can maneuver the enemy army so that the reinforcements from Polis have an open, unguarded target on the east side.

They talk more than the sleep most nights. They’ve long since learned to function on empty stomachs and a few hours of rest, and when they do give in to sleep, there’s no room for the demons to slink in and keep them awake.

And Clarke is starting to understand what she went looking for when she left Camp Jaha.

* * *

“Tomorrow,” Lexa says into the stillness one night. “If we rise early and march through the day, we will reach your home by tomorrow.”

And after, the war. They’ve spent so long discussing it, and now it’s at hand.

Clarke nods at her, quiet. She knows. She’s been counting the days in the back of her head every spare minute. Even so, the idea of home is such a foreign concept, so far removed from her current reality, that she can’t muster a reaction to Lexa’s words.

She continues looking up at the stars instead, naming the constellations like her father taught her; Lexa continues to stare into the fire. So close to home, they’re finally out of war strategies to discuss, travel routes to review, so they wait in easy silence for sleep to come.

There’s a certain amount of contentedness to the air.

No more running, no more strategizing, no more fighting.

_I want this all the time._

The thought is so sudden and powerful in her mind that it nearly forms on her lips. This is a life or death situation, Clarke knows, and the urgency to get back to their people thrums in their veins…but there’s a small, selfish part of Clarke that wishes, somehow, that she could prolong this journey with Lexa.

In these small spaces, removed from the threats that have been hanging over her since she landed, Clarke can appreciate the beauty of the earth. She never felt so small when she was up on the Ark, looking down to the earth, but now as she stares up into the cosmos, it’s hard to comprehend the perfection of where she is within it.

It’s just her, and Lexa, and the earth. That’s what she wants—not Commander Lexa and…whatever title they would doubtless give her when she returned. Just Clarke and Lexa, and none of the responsibilities that come with their leadership and positions and choices.

Guilt fills her chest at the thought. She tries to push it away but the more she tries, the more she thinks about it and the greater the wanting ache grows until at last, she lets out a sigh.

It’s like Lexa knows. Maybe she heard the sigh. Maybe she is searching the fire for the same answers. Clarke feels Lexa’s fingertips brush over the back of her hand, feather-light and comforting.

Without looking, Clarke turns her hand over and their fingers naturally intertwine.

They sit in silence like that for a while. Even with the comfort of Lexa’s touch, Clarke can’t articulate what she’s feeling.

Finally, “Lay down with me.”

There’s a pause, and then a quiet rustle as Lexa complies, edging into the blankets and replacing the touch of her hand with the length of her body. She holds stiff for a moment in a show of unusual hesitation, but then Clarke rolls over and pulls her in and Lexa’s body turns pliant, soft, warm.

Clarke noses her way onto Lexa’s chest, resting beneath her chin with one arm slung across Lexa’s stomach. Her heartbeat is low and steady—50 beats per minute, the doctor within her counts. It forms a metronome to her thoughts and slows them. Her eyelids grow heavy.

The contact hasn’t palliated the ache in Clarke’s chest or the guilt she feels for doing this, but she’ll take what she can get. Even if it’s just for one night.

* * *

They switch positions sometime during the night: Clarke wakes as the sun breaks over the horizon to find the front of her body pressed against Lexa’s side, her lips on the commander’s shoulder, Lexa’s head rolled toward Clarke.

She’s still asleep, breathing slowly, eyes flicking back and forth behind her eyelids. It’s the most vulnerable Clarke’s ever seen her. And it’s not entirely unwelcome.

The Ark is within a day’s walk, if they get an early start, the commander had said. But the commander is still asleep and Clarke is curled warm and safe against Lexa and the same feeling of wanting from the last night shoots through her again.

And Clarke gives herself over to it.

Ignoring the cry of _selfish!_ In the back of her mind, she shifts closer to Lexa, settling beneath her arm, moving her face from Lexa’s shoulder to her neck and holding there, immobile, hoping the commander doesn’t wake at the slight movement and touch.

After several minutes of listening to that same, even breathing, Clarke feels herself start to doze as well. The Ark is a day’s walk away if they leave now. She decides they can make up the time later.

Clarke’s not sure how long she drifts between consciousness and unconsciousness before Lexa wakes, only that it’s not long enough. She feels Lexa tense, first, then relax; a moment later, she tenses again and this time she gently shifts away, leaving Clarke in the too-big bedroll and climbing to her feet.

Clarke keeps her eyes shut, equal parts unwilling to leave the comfort of her bed and unwilling to reveal she had been awake and enjoying the feeling of Lexa asleep on her, as the other woman pads around the camp. Her last moments of morning lounging are way too short, though. Before long, Clarke can sense Lexa is almost ready to leave, her armor donned, traces of the campfire scattered, bag packed.

Indeed, when she finally opens her eyes, Lexa’s sitting on a log, back to Clarke, waiting. She can obviously hear Clarke as the latter haphazardly dresses and packs her supplies, but she says nothing, does nothing.

“Ready?” Clarke asks, when she’s out of reasons to delay and Lexa still hasn’t looked at her.

“Yes.”

It’s the most either woman says for the next several hours of the morning. They both walk heavy with their own thoughts, and Clarke suspects by the twist of Lexa’s lips that Lexa’s ruminations are not wildly different from her own: that with each step they take closer to their people and responsibilities, they leave last night further and further away.

* * *

The sun is nearing the horizon, painting long shadows behind them, when Clarke and Lexa at last crest the final hill. And there it is: a half a mile away, jarringly out of place against the natural backdrop, the twisted silver metal of the Ark reflects the sunlight and shines like a beacon. In the camp surrounding the remains, there are fewer tents now, but small structures dot the ground within the fences and her people seem like ants from this far away.

But she can see them, and she feels a pang of longing. Home. It’s always wherever they are.

“Can you make the last steps on your own?” Lexa asks.

It’s a fair question: their journey has left them broken, bruised, bloody. Clarke hasn’t eaten for two days and Lexa’s once fake limp is now very real. It’s a miracle they can stand on this mountain top without leaning on one another.

However, it’s an easy descent down this hill and short walk through trees she knows like the back of her hand. Even her faltering legs can get her into camp before she drops. Lexa would make it with her in a heartbeat if Clarke needed her to, she knows that. But she also knows that Lexa needs to continue the trip to her own home.

“I’ll be fine.”

“The first attack should come within three days. I’ll instruct Indra to send a rider to the Ark when I’ve made it safely to our camp, so that I know you have made it safely to yours and that your people will ride with us; another rider will come when the Trikru warriors spot the Ice Nation. Send your army then, if your people will follow you. If the attack does not come in three days, I’ll withdraw my people to the Ark and meet you and we will develop a new plan at that point.”

They’ve gone over it several times already; Clarke has new appreciation for late nights and Lexa’s love of strategy. She nods.

Lexa doesn’t mention the part where she suggested—commanded, rather—that Clarke stay in the rear of the battle, nor does Clarke bring up her very real intention to be leading her people from the front. It’s been a point of contention and bringing it up now will solve nothing.

“You should come with me, to the Camp,” Clarke suggests suddenly. “You need food, rest, medical treatment. Even if it’s just for a few hours. You’d be safe.”

Lexa begins shaking her head at Clarke’s first words and doesn’t stop despite the growing plea in Clarke’s voice through the end of the request. “I will eat when I meet with my generals, then I will rest when I know my people will not be blindsided by an attack. As for my wounds…” Her gaze softens. “You treated them. You know they are not life-threatening.”

And still, the strange unwillingness to leave Lexa’s side persists. She wants to be closer. Her mother, Bellamy, Raven, Octavia, Monty…they’re so close. But she doesn’t want to go back without Lexa.

They stand together for several minutes, side by side, staring at Clarke’s home.

She finds her voice at last. “Lexa, when this is over, do you think we could ever be…” She trails off, because no action sounds more enticing than just _being_ with Lexa.

“Those are not wise words before a war,” Lexa says quietly.

Clarke searches the skyline for a response.

“I have feelings for you too, Clarke. Someday, we could be.” Lexa sounds so reverent when says it, Clarke nearly believes they already _are_ , were it not for the undercutting sadness in her words. “But you are not mine to love. You’re theirs,” she says, nodding to the camp. “And you could love me but I could never be yours. We belong to our people.”

And Clarke knows. It had been easy to pretend differently when Lexa kissed her in the tent, and even when they marched together into battle. There was so much hope back then (it feels like a lifetime ago), that she was starting to imagine a future where life was simple again after the battle, where they could live peacefully with the grounders, where she could take up drawing again. Spend her days in Camp Jaha and her nights in Lexa’s tent. Visit Polis. Live.

It was so pretty to think so.

But the reality had been undeniable since the moment Lexa walked away from her on the mountain. Anything between them will always be a past tense or a future tense or an almost or a maybe. Tangible, visible, but ephemeral and impossible to catch. Just like everything else in this life.

“We could try.”

Lexa looks over, her eyebrows quirking up and her lips parting slightly. Clarke is just as surprised at her own words; nonetheless, she believes them. She matches Lexa’s gaze. “We do the best we can with what we have, right?”

Lexa smiles.

She holds that smile, soft and a little sad, when Clarke leans in and kisses her. The taste of it washes away the bloody metallic tang that Clarke has had in her mouth for weeks. It’s more than likely she’ll taste it again, with war on the horizon, but for now she’s found something to chase it away, if only for the night, or even the hour. She pulls Lexa closer, and Lexa kisses her harder.

It’ll never be perfect. But they can try.

Lexa pulls away, presses her lips to Clarke’s cheek, then her ear. “Stay safe.”

Clarke swallows hard and lets her eyes flutter closed as Lexa kisses her again, with an exceedingly gentle touch. It’s dizzying to think that this might be the way it will always be—always walking away from one another, stolen moments between war councils, whispered prayers before battle, the constant tide of duty pulling them away from safer waters—but maybe it’s what they deserve. And maybe it’s enough.

Three days. Clarke begins the walk to Camp Jaha feeling like she can breathe again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially, I had every intention of keeping this a short story and ending on this note. I wrote the ending first. However, the majority of this came so easily and it was so enjoyable to write that I decided to plot out a part two, which would bring in the full cast of characters and the civil war. So, this chapter functions as both a denouement and a symbolic “quiet moment” before the war of the next story, Part 2.
> 
> But, I want to make sure I have Part 2 fully plotted so that I’m not left with plot holes or iffy situations, and that plot might take a little bit. Additionally, I have a nagging AU idea in the back of my head that I’m going to play with as I plot Part 2.  
> The AU might come first, but have faith, I will deliver the second part of this story ASAP.
> 
> In any case, something will be out very soon because I’m excited about both ideas!
> 
> As always, thank you for all the feedback and comments, they are hugely appreciated and probably a major reason why I kicked out this fic so quickly, compared to my usual standards. Cheers!
> 
> #63371


End file.
